Here is why yellow school buses have those black stripes

Thank you

It’s so weird to me that America has a special kind of bus for school buses. We just use… normal buses. Same for mail trucks.

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Video citation needed.

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Ah, the joys of school buses. I had the pleasure of riding one in high school. About 45 minutes in the morning, and 45 minutes in the afternoon. Our bus was packed, three adult-sized people per seat. And since the seats were designed for grade-schoolers, the person on the aisle sat “half-butt”, which is what we called it since you could only get one cheek on the seat. Good times.

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Okay

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I don’t think you lose the democracy angle with writing.

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GO BANANA!

anyway, i am surprised at the common-sense answer to this. i went in just thinking it was a matter of visibility (black and yellow being one of the most eye-catching contrasting color combinations next to black and white), but now i know there’s more to it than that. Also, i bet he’s one of those bus drivers who have the most behaved kids.

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Maybe Clawboss wouldn’t be comfortable expressing himself through the written word; and maybe he wouldn’t get the exposure for his thoughts via a blog, or publishing a slim volume?

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In this video we’re gonna show you why you don’t need a video for everything, but only do so after the sponsored content.

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I think that’s an artifact of the app he was using. YouTube and other video-making apps (like TikTok and [RIP] Vine) have a “press and hold the screen to record” behavior, and they let you chain multiple "press and hold"s together to make a single video, but they also generally don’t have terribly extensive editing functionality, so it’s sort of a “one-take” process where your takes are as long as you can be reasonably comfortable you can go without goofing up what you’re saying.

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Apparently, any requirement depends on the size/weight of the bus. Large (enough) buses must be designed to handle collision forces in such a way that belts are not required. (Me? If I had kids, I’d want them belted-in when on those larger buses, and in spite of the engineering assurances; there is always the unexpected.)

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I rode a lot of school buses in the seventies, as we lived way out on the foothills outside of Tucson. That was the decade in which they changed the seats from really dangerous short seats with steel rails around them, to much taller seats with full padding. Never seat belts.
I have a memory from the old style bus of the driver having to stop the bus and put a band-aid on a little girl’s bleeding chin after he hit a bump on a dirt road.
The only person that I know who was injured in a bus accident had been sitting with her feet sticking out the window when it rolled over. She paid dearly for her foolishness.

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Many of the buses I see like those have them painted over in various colors. They’re mostly the private owned buses that transport mexican and haitian farm workers tho.

You were 16 in middle school? :wink:

I rode a school bus in middle school, which was 2.5+ miles from where we lived, through rough neighborhoods. You didn’t want to miss the bus and have to walk through those streets. Getting bullied by the kids on the bus was lesser of two bad situations. On the bus, the situation didn’t last as long, and the driver would at least yell at the bullies to sit down, though rarely gave a crap if the bullies were torturing fellow riders, psychologically or physically.

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I grew up in northern Canada. Same arrangement. One very cold morning, I brought paper, kindling, and firewood to the bus stop. It was a popular move.

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(warning: lots of flashing)

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Clearly you’ve never had a YouTube channel. :smirk:

That little “don’t quote me on that” prevented 3000 trolley comments, trust me. Instead he’ll only get 1000 about it because people are goddam monsters.

That was an enjoyable minute of my life because that guy is entertaining, and I learned things. What’s wrong with that? If you don’t want to watch, don’t watch.

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Ha! Now you have me picturing little bus stop hobo camp type scenes, which are adorable in my imagination. My experience was in Maine, and we definitely also could’ve used the extra warmth.

One kid used to sometimes bring a thermos of hot cocoa to share - his house was closest to the stop. No pyrotechnics, though.

Just remembering, when we went through the hair spray phase, spring (black fly season) was disgusting. They’d be crawling all through our 'dos by the time the bus showed up. Good times.

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Thanks for the public service, and generally I agree with you. Most video explainers consist of:

  • Minutes 1-6: The question! Restatement of the question! Discussion of why the question is important! Discussion of how few people know the answer to the question! Four ads!
  • Minute 6-6.1: Answer.
  • Minute 6.1 to end: Admonitions to follow the creator on all social media ever created

In this particular instance, though, I disagree. This was about a minute long, the dude was entertaining, and he got right to the point. If you’re gonna have a video, we should encourage this kind of video.

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Oh man, that would’ve been welcome!

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