Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: School Bus Yellow

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Why are all school buses the same color? Because one man made it so. This is that story. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Two quick questions off the top. Did you ever have to ride a school bus to school with regularity? I got two words for that. Oh, yes. And please tell me you do. Do you remember the name of your school bus driver? I got several words. No, I feel really bad that I don't know that you asked, but no, I don't remember the name

of my school bus driver. Oh, that's okay. You may have had several. I have a theory that like a school bus driver if you have the same one as one of those it kind of sticks with you. Even though my dad was my principal I usually wrote to work with dad but I did ride the school bus some because you want to as a kid some. Ruby's dying to ride a school bus but they don't have one at her school, and it's always sad when she sees them. But I had Mr. Wagnan was my school bus driver,

which is interesting now that I think of it, because before school buses, you might've been taken to school in a wagon. That was pretty good segue, man. It's been a little while. Yeah. It's true, until the 1930s, the late 30s, actually the 40s probably.

Yeah. If you were a rural kid, a rur juror, or the kid of a rur juror, and you wanted to get to school, you very well may have been taking to school in a horse and buggy, essentially. Or a cart, a farm cart, maybe a truck. Who knows, whatever could been taken to school in a horse and buggy, essentially, or a cart, farm cart, maybe a truck. Who knows? Whatever could get you to school, that's what you got

to school in, because there was no federal system or standardization across the United States. There was whatever your school district could think of to get you to school. And even trying to get you to school was a fairly new concept and in the early 20th century after industrialization drew everyone to the cities because the school was in the city. That's where most people were. You know, before that it was like, good luck getting to school. Now it was like, okay, we really need to get you to school because we have to train you

to work in these factories, dumb dumb. Exactly. Thankfully, there was a gentleman and this is just kind of the perfect short stuff. Why we invented short stuff was because of topics like this, like why are school buses yellow? It's because of a man named Frank Sear, C-Y-R. He was born in a rural area. He was raised on a farm in Nebraska, and as he grew up, he got a B in his bonnet

to advocate for the education of people in rural areas. He was a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. And he started studying school transportation. He was like, I'm sure he was like, you know what? I got taken to school in a truck maybe, or maybe it was even a wagon back then. And we got a real hit and miss system going on here.

So we need to protect kids, keep them safe on the way to school. And a good way to start that is nine years later in 1939, he organized a conference in New York City about improving and standardizing the American school bus. Yeah. And it was a success. He didn't just get crickets back. He got a lot of people, educators, people who were in charge of transportation for their counties, people who made buses,

all showed up in New York City in that 1939 conference. And he said, okay, let's create these standards. And by the end of this conference, we're going to have come up with standards for school buses throughout the entire United States. And now it's just like, you know, big whoop. But if you go back and think about it, especially that this just didn't exist and he created it out of thin air, it's a pretty cool accomplishment actually because he was successful immediately.

Yeah, absolutely. That's why, you know, when you get on a school bus, you're gonna have the same width of the aisle. The seats are gonna be basically the same. The doors and the dimensions of this stuff are gonna be the same. But what Frank's here is really, really known for is School Bus Yellow,

or the official name is National School Bus Glossy Yellow. Pretty great name. I love it. It's a mouthful, but the reason that that was part of the standardization too was as Frank Sears son William put it, that whenever you saw a bus that color, you'd think, okay, there's a bunch of kids going somewhere. Yeah. You just associated with it. So that meant they needed an eye-catching color

that wasn't already widely used, that they could associate with school buses. And that's exactly what they came up with. Yeah. So as the story goes, Cyr was looking at colors in his office, was really drawn to all these colors on the orange spectrum, different kinds of yellows, greens stuff like that because he wanted something that stood out and At that 1939 meeting he brought 50. Jeez. He narrowed it down to 50 choices

I probably would have brought like three maybe But he brought 50 choices hung them on the the wall, and said, all right, we need a special committee. We're all gonna decide on this. And they chose that sort of yellowish orange color, originally called National School Bus Chrome. And that was it. He published a 42-page booklet saying, here's the standards that we're proposing. And that pamphlet was School Bus Yellow.

Yeah. I say we take a break and when we come back we'll explain why that was such a great color for Sierra Peck. Let's do it. One of the best shows of the year according to Apple, Amazon and Time is back for another round. We have more insightful conversations between myself, Paul Muldoon and Paul McCartney about his life and career. We had a big bear of a man who was called Mal Evans, who was our lord. And he was coming back on the plane and he said, will you pass the salt and pepper? And I miss her.

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Okay Chuck, so Frank Sear and his conference members at that 1939 conference, they came up with 44 dimensions for the school bus, or 44 standards for the school bus. And one of them was school bus glossy yellow. And Frank Sear was not a safety expert. He was not a visual scientist. He was not an ophthalmologist. He didn't know anything, but he had a good gut for picking out what color would be the best one to pick. And that yellow was a really great color because as this guy who's interviewed Dr.

Steven Solomon, he's an optometrist and founder of a company called Visibility in Motion, which is a consulting group, he said that yellows are most easily seen by the human eye, not just for any like people with normal vision, but even if you have red, green color deficiency, you still see yellow. And he basically said like Frank Sear stumbled upon essentially the perfect safe color. Yeah, that's awesome. I love it.

The reason why yellow is so visible is because it stimulates both the red and the green cones. We've got red, green and blue cones, and it just sets two of them aflame, right? So even if you have red, green color blindness, you can't differentiate red or green. Yellow says, hey, what about neither? And you can still see yellow. I love it. So it works for almost everybody. Imagine there's somebody that probably can't see yellow, right? Yeah, I guess, but they're probably just being contrary.

Yeah, maybe so. Frank Sear passed away in 1995, but obviously was able to see his vision. I imagine every time Frank Sear was out on the road and saw one of those yellow school buses, he probably felt a little warmth in his tum-tums. I know I would. So these days, any school bus in the United States of America that has sold or lease, they have to meet all those federal safety standards and be painted that color. I do think it's funny and we're gonna cover

this kind of quickly that and this is something I've always wondered that they got together. They said, all right, let's get 44 standards, width of stuff, height of stuff. But we're all in agreement. No seat belts, right? I know. It's crazy. I've always wondered about that, but it kind of makes sense when it's explained here. And by the way, big thanks to Dave Ruse. This is one of his short articles from housetoforks.com. But school buses don't drive super fast.

They don't hit, like when they are in an accident, it's usually not the kind of thing where like, there's a very fast stop. They're heavy, they're slow, they don't stop suddenly if there's an accident. I mean they plow through whatever they're hitting is in reality what happens. So the seatbelts like for a kid 15 rows back plowing through a Prius at 23 miles an hour, that kid's not gonna go flying, you know, 18 feet through the front windshield. That kid will just be like, hey watch the speed bumps. Prius at 23 miles an hour, that kid's not gonna go flying, you know, 18 feet through the front windshield.

That kid will just be like, hey, watch the speed bumps. Mr. Wagnan. Yeah. But school buses are very heavily regulated and very safe. They are compartmentalized. So, you know, those seats are very closely spaced

for that reason. They have energy absorbing backs for that reason There's all sorts of rollover protection and crush standards and stuff like that. So school buses are safe They just don't have seatbelts Statistically speaking, they're safe too apparently in the United States Every any given weekday 26 million American kids ride to school on a school bus. And I looked up, I had a lot of trouble finding this, but I'm pretty sure what I found was that that's more than

20% of the people on the road in the United States in any given weekday. Oh, wow. And yet it represents less than 1% of all traffic fatalities. Now, was that rush hour stats? I don't know. man, I tried really hard and I couldn't find anything nuanced like that. I basically had to cobble it together myself. So what I found was that on the road,

something like 36% of Americans drive any given day. So I took that and figured out how many Americans there are, what's 36% of that? What percentage is 26 million? That number, and that's where I came up with more than 20%. No, no, no, I like it. I think it tracks it. I think that we will definitely hear from someone

who thinks they have found a better way to calculate that. But just the eyeball test, when I'm driving Ruby to school in the morning, we see a lot of school buses. Oh yeah? They're everywhere. You do not want to get behind one. No, and you do want to stop though, if that arm goes out because that is a,

I don't know if it's true, but I heard that that is like the second worst moving violation you can get behind like a DUI. I don't know if that's true, but I know it is a hefty fine. They don't take lightly. It seems like it should be. And I mean, even if the cops don't get you, there's people who will chase you in their car if they see you do that. It's a really gross violation of like social standards.

It is. You don't do that. No, you're like, I don't care about children's lives is what you're saying. I need to get to Starbucks. I need to get to to cracker barrel. I need to get to Starbucks. I need to get to Cracker Barrel. I need to get somewhere that's more important than a child's life is what you're shouting at everyone. You know who else didn't care about children's lives? Is that guy who kidnapped that school bus, yellow school bus in Chowchilla. Yeah. Buried that thing. That's right. You got anything else? No, that's a past episode. Chowchilla school kidnapping.

Look it up. It's great. Yeah. Hats off to Frank Sear and hats off to Short Stuff, which is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.