I have a question about the rules of school busses (I'm not American). It seems like the expectation is that _all_ traffic is required to stop if a bus is stopped, is that correct? If so, why?
Here (Australia) the bus just pulls over and you get off on to the sidewalk, even children, why is it not the case in the US?
As mentioned, in a lot of suburban areas in the US where school buses are common there are no crosswalks or traffic lights (or sidewalks or physical bus stops, for that matter). Most of the time there isn't so much traffic that stopping all of it is a huge burden.
Also, there's generally an exception for divided highways - if the road has a physical median or barrier, the oncoming traffic doesn't have to stop. I assume the bus route accounts for this and drops kids off on the correct side of the road.
> (St)Roads where the kids have to cross a busy road to get to the other side where their house is.
That's pretty different from my experience.
Almost all the school bus stops around here are on small low-speed residential streets.
And while there are surely some stops on faster 2-lane roads...
A stroad or major road would mean 4+ lanes, which in my state means the school bus only stops traffic on one side. No kids will be crossing at those bus stops.
Ah there might be some assumption here that I didn't realise. Typically we'd have a cross walk or traffic light near the bus stop where you'd cross. I'm in Sydney so I don't know of anywhere that you'd be going that fast that would also have bus stops (they max exist I'm just not aware of them)
The kids near me (in Melbourne, about 10km outside the CBD) just take the same public transport system as everyone else. You don't see school bus systems unless you're in the far outer suburbs, a regional/rural area, or maybe some other special cases.
Growing up, our school bus stop was on a service road off a 100km/h highway, but it had good visibility in both directions and most of the kids over the other side got dropped off by their parents while they were young.
It's a long video but the tldr is that Americans don't have foot paths. You would think they would but nope, it's not like Australia where everywhere you walk has a path and down paths to the road.
Even directly around schools no footpaths, and it's all because it's no one's responsibility other then the home owner.
Here (Australia) the bus just pulls over and you get off on to the sidewalk, even children, why is it not the case in the US?