School bus light colours in your jurisdiction

[Mr. Matté]

I remember in my younger years, I think I saw a commercial where the background B-roll had a school bus with only red lights on the top which confused me. I guess the footage was shot in Canada. All of the buses I've seen since 1995 in NJ always had ambers and reds.

[andrepoiy]

Where I live usually when a school bus has a stop on a major arterial road, they don't put up the red lights and just use hazards.

One exception to that was once when my bus broke down, and the replacement came, they put the lights when we were being transferred over. 6 lanes of (undivided) arterial road came to a halt surprisingly

[Takumi]

When I was a kid, some of the older school buses, usually backups when the newer ones were down for maintenance, were red-only, but by the time I reached high school the entire fleet had amber.

[JoePCool14]

I'm too young to have been alive when there were only red lights in my area. I don't remember anything from my trips to Canada either.

This is off topic, but I do vaguely remember being stuck on the side of the old Elgin-O'Hare Expressway in a school bus when I was in day camp as a kid for some reason. I want to say one of the buses in our platoon broke down or something.

[1995hoo]

Amber-only flashing lights seem to cause some drivers confusion.  For example, if a school bus is parallel-parked with its amber lights flashing but no stop sign extended, I see a lot of people slow down or stop because they aren't totally sure it's OK to pass the bus.

Normally when I see this, the bus just has its hazard lights active. Having the larger pre-red lights active would be a bit confusing, since many drivers treat the system like a yellow light at a signal (prepare to stop or keep going if too close).

No, I don't mean regular hazard lights.  I mean the alternating amber lights up top.  In fact, I just ran across one yesterday on my way home from work, parallel-parked on an undivided four-lane avenue.

I know you don't mean regular hazard lights, I was just saying that when I see a bus pulled off to the side of the road, loading or unloading, it's normally the hazard lights that are on. Having the pre-red flashing amber lights on whilst parallel park is very confusing for drivers, as alternating flashing amber always proceeds flashing red. Unless there's no kid getting on or off, in which case, the lights extinguish, and the bus continues.

We had a school bus driver that used the right turn signal for that.

A school bus driver in my area used to do that. Problem was, she would stop in a right turn lane to kill time when she was ahead on her route. That's how I discovered she did this–I wanted to turn right, I didn't know she was idling, and I got stuck behind her and had to blow the horn. I wound up making a complaint to the county about it. Had she used her hazard flashers, I'd have know she wasn't turning (though it was still an inappropriate place for her to stop). But because she was using her blinker, I quite reasonably thought she was turning right.

[jakeroot]

Hazards seem to be the only thing that universally means, whilst stopped, "go around" . Everything else seems like it could be misinterpreted.

[Road Hog]

My biggest fascination with school buses when I was a kid was the NASA-like array of toggle switches on a console on the left side of the driver that controlled all the lights and other functions on the newer buses.

After I hit junior high I loathed riding a bus and either rode my bike or walked to school. When I biked I regularly beat the bus home.

[MikieTimT]

The only buses that had red only by the time I was in Kindergarten were the older Ford B-series backup buses.  I always thought it odd when picked up by them as the only warnings they offered the motoring public were giving some extra breeze to everyone on the bus by slightly opening the door to kick on the red lights early when decelerating to pick up/drop off.  My regular bus, #14, was a hot rod International Harvester, though.  Manual tranmission, and loud V8 gas motor without much in the way of muffling, so you got the pops on overrun.  I'd be making the bus engine noise with my tongue and lips all the way back down the driveway until I'd hugged Mom.

Just realized I can still make that noise after all these years...

[Dirt Roads]

...My regular bus, #14, was a hot rod International Harvester, though.  Manual tranmission, and loud V8 gas motor without much in the way of muffling, so you got the pops on overrun.  I'd be making the bus engine noise with my tongue and lips all the way back down the driveway until I'd hugged Mom.

The entire time I was in school in Putnam County, West Virginia, the county school system had a perhaps-controversial policy to always purchases those "hot rod" buses with International engines and manual transmissions.  My first bus, Old Number 22 built in 1948 was likely one of the earliest of those purchased by the county school system.  It ran for more than 20 years, and the engine and transmission were still in good shape when the rest of it had to be scrapped. 

Just realized I can still make that noise after all these years...

I probably can still make that noise, as well.  Perhaps I'd better be quiet.  At this age, I make enough engine noises without trying to.   

[Scott5114]

Our school district was rumored to have a policy of replacing buses every 7 years (which made some degree of sense, as the district was quite large, and our sports games far enough away, I would expect that the buses had a lot of mileage on them by that time). When I was in elementary school, we had Carpenter school buses with International engines. When I was in about middle school, they were replaced by Blue Bird buses with Chevy engines. I'm pretty sure they were both automatics.

[Big John]

There was a law that pre-1977 buses had to be retired by 1992.

[kphoger]

Our school district was rumored to have a policy of replacing buses every 7 years (which made some degree of sense, as the district was quite large, and our sports games far enough away, I would expect that the buses had a lot of mileage on them by that time). When I was in elementary school, we had Carpenter school buses with International engines. When I was in about middle school, they were replaced by Blue Bird buses with Chevy engines. I'm pretty sure they were both automatics.

I've heard that this is currently the law for intercity buses (think Greyhound) in Mexico.