Stopping for School Buses

[cl94]

I use 9 and 3. Keeps my hands at the radio controls and cruise control and my steering wheel is designed to encourage that position. If using one hand, it's always at 9.

[Zeffy]

I use 9 and 3. Keeps my hands at the radio controls and cruise control and my steering wheel is designed to encourage that position. If using one hand, it's always at 9.

Yep - my Civic wheel feels like it was made for 9 and 3, and that is the way I was taught. If I one hand it its mostly on the 9, or slightly lower.

[cl94]

I use 9 and 3. Keeps my hands at the radio controls and cruise control and my steering wheel is designed to encourage that position. If using one hand, it's always at 9.

Yep - my Civic wheel feels like it was made for 9 and 3, and that is the way I was taught. If I one hand it its mostly on the 9, or slightly lower.

That is what I drive. I drove a Corolla for most of the summer for my job and it was the same way. Seems to be a Honda and Toyota standard.

[GaryV]

Who remembers practicing with just the left hand on the steering wheel?  So when the girl slides over on the bench seat, you can put your right arm around her.

[cl94]

Who remembers practicing with just the left hand on the steering wheel?  So when the girl slides over on the bench seat, you can put your right arm around her.

I remember practicing with just my left hand, but that's only because I learned to drive on a stick.

[Brandon]

Who remembers practicing with just the left hand on the steering wheel?  So when the girl slides over on the bench seat, you can put your right arm around her.

I remember practicing with just my left hand, but that's only because I learned to drive on a stick.

Likewise, but I tend to drive left handed anyway.

[jakeroot]

I learned 10/2 at school, but was then informed that the preference was now 9/3. I tend to drive at 10/horn/gear lever when necessary, since I drive a stick (I had to unlearn resting my hand on the gear lever).

[kkt]

Who remembers practicing with just the left hand on the steering wheel?  So when the girl slides over on the bench seat, you can put your right arm around her.

In driver training, one of the exercises was driving with just our right hand, then with just our left, and seeing which made it easier to steer.  (In my case, left.)  Unfortunately, no girl was involved...

[vdeane]

It's a required skill for roadgeeks in any case, because while there might not be a girl, there will be a camera

[1995hoo]

The cars in which I learned to drive didn't have bench seats, but I did most of my learning on a 5-speed, so driving with just my left hand on the wheel has always been natural. (My first car did have a split bench seat, but with the four on the floor nobody was gonna sit in the front middle anyway.)

[slorydn1]

Among the signs they have when you enter the state on the interstates, North Carolina has one that says "slow moving school buses use this highway" or something like that.  Obviously school buses don't stop on interstates, and are not particularly slow moving.  Never understood the point of the signs.

North Carolina G.S. 20-218(b) would be why, to wit:

(b)        Speed Limits. - It is unlawful to drive a school bus occupied by one or more child passengers over the highways or public vehicular areas of the State at a greater rate of speed than 45 miles per hour. It is unlawful to drive a school activity bus occupied by one or more child passengers over the highways or public vehicular areas of North Carolina at a greater rate of speed than 55 miles per hour.

For someone who hasn't been warned about it in advance, the closure rate between someone doing 70 and a bus doing 45 can be quite unnerving-and we all know that people are usually over the limit to start with.

To the OP, here in NC the controlling statute is G.S. 20-217, and paragraph (c) allows for not stopping on a divided highway:

(c)        Notwithstanding subsection (a) of this section, the driver of a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction from the school bus, upon any road, highway or city street that has been divided into two roadways, so constructed as to separate vehicular traffic between the two roadways by an intervening space (including a center lane for left turns if the roadway consists of at least four more lanes) or by a physical barrier, need not stop upon meeting and passing any school bus that has stopped in the roadway across the dividing space or physical barrier.

I am not seeing anything in our statutes here that would alleviate the OP's concern had a similar incident to his occurred here. I would hope that the bus driver would be more aware of their surroundings and figure out a way to allow for traffic to legally get by him/her because in the absence of that the only alternative is to suck it up and wait.

[Duke87]

It's worth noting that most of the world does not have laws requiring all traffic completely stop for a school bus and stay stopped until the bus moves. Exercise an elevated level of caution, yes, but not completely stop.

For example, New Zealand requires you slow down to 20 km/h (about 12.5 mph) to pass a stopped school bus:
http://www.drivingtests.co.nz/roadcode-questions/car/core/what-is-the-speed-limit-for-vehicles-pas/

The heavy handed laws in the US are the result of three particular aspects of our culture:
1) we are extremely protective of children, and assume they need to be coddled
2) we have a driving culture that's half rebellious and half oblivious, so compliance levels with a lot of rules of the road are low
3) we have a mindset that is quite authoritarian, where whenever there is a problem we look to stricter rules and stiffer penalties to try and solve it rather than addressing the motives for the problematic behavior.

I would argue this is a vicious cycle; that one major reason American drivers disregard rules of the road so willingly is because the rules they are expected to follow are often draconian and unreasonable. See for example how raising speed limits has been known to increase rates of compliance, while lowering them has been known to have the opposite effect.

I therefore hypothesize that if we were to loosen our rules up around school buses and around driving in general, that counterintuitively it would increase safety because it would cut down on road rage, and because when you make reasonable rules, most people will follow them without a need for enforcement.

[kendancy66]

Among the signs they have when you enter the state on the interstates, North Carolina has one that says "slow moving school buses use this highway" or something like that.  Obviously school buses don't stop on interstates, and are not particularly slow moving.  Never understood the point of the signs.

School bus top speed may be either governed mechanically, or geared such that it's difficult to go fast, or slow to accelerate when entering the freeway, or drivers restricted as a matter of policy.  Many drivers are probably going faster.

Governors on school busses are annoying.  They make merging more difficult and hazardous.  I get the whole "protect the children" thing but when you merge onto a highway 15mph below the speed limit (and 20-25mph below the actual rate of traffic) you can create a sizable bottleneck with people moving left to let the bus in.

At least the school buses I've seen are moving along at highway speeds on highways.  Heck, I've even encountered them going above the speed limit.  Where are we finding buses that have governors putting them well below the speed limit?  And remember...the bus driver driving slow is not the same thing as a governor forcing the driver to drive slow.

North Carolina.  That is why they have those signs that say slow moving school buses use this highway

[RobbieL2415]

It's worth noting that most of the world does not have laws requiring all traffic completely stop for a school bus and stay stopped until the bus moves. Exercise an elevated level of caution, yes, but not completely stop.

For example, New Zealand requires you slow down to 20 km/h (about 12.5 mph) to pass a stopped school bus:
http://www.drivingtests.co.nz/roadcode-questions/car/core/what-is-the-speed-limit-for-vehicles-pas/

The heavy handed laws in the US are the result of three particular aspects of our culture:
1) we are extremely protective of children, and assume they need to be coddled
2) we have a driving culture that's half rebellious and half oblivious, so compliance levels with a lot of rules of the road are low
3) we have a mindset that is quite authoritarian, where whenever there is a problem we look to stricter rules and stiffer penalties to try and solve it rather than addressing the motives for the problematic behavior.

I would argue this is a vicious cycle; that one major reason American drivers disregard rules of the road so willingly is because the rules they are expected to follow are often draconian and unreasonable. See for example how raising speed limits has been known to increase rates of compliance, while lowering them has been known to have the opposite effect.

I therefore hypothesize that if we were to loosen our rules up around school buses and around driving in general, that counterintuitively it would increase safety because it would cut down on road rage, and because when you make reasonable rules, most people will follow them without a need for enforcement.

In terms of driver fatalities, though, I believe the US and probably Canada are near the bottom.

There's plenty of countries that have subjectivity worse drivers.  Like China.

[jakeroot]

In terms of driver fatalities, though, I believe the US and probably Canada are near the bottom.

There's plenty of countries that have subjectivity worse drivers.  Like China.

Compared to other wealthy nations, the US does not fare well (even compared to Canada): http://roadskillmap.com/

[Duke87]

In terms of driver fatalities, though, I believe the US and probably Canada are near the bottom.

There's plenty of countries that have subjectivity worse drivers.  Like China.

Compared to other wealthy nations, the US does not fare well (even compared to Canada): http://roadskillmap.com/

Compared to other wealthy nations, Americans drive more. This map shows the number of fatalities per capita, but it doesn't control for differences in per capita VMT.

Nonetheless, that isn't the only factor. The per capita death rate in the US is roughly double what it is in Western Europe according to this map, while the difference in VMT is not as great (average 7,000-8,000 miles per year for private cars in the EU, 10,000-12,000 miles per year for private cars in the US).

I also note that some European nations that are culturally known for being less respectful of rules (see Italy and Greece, for example) have higher death rates than France, Germany, the UK, the nordics, etc.