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Short Stuff: School Bus Yellow · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck, and there's Cherry and the driver's seat hopping along,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: bouncing along in our little stuff. You should know school bus.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Two quick questions off the top. Did you ever have
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: to ride a school bus to school with regularity?
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: I've got two words for that.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, and please tell me you do. Do you
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: remember the name of your school bus driver?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I got several words.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: No.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I feel really bad that I don't now that you ask,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: But no, I don't remember the name of my school
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: bus driver.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Oh that's okay. You may have had several. I have
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: a theory that like a school bus driver, if you
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: have the same one as one of those, that kind
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: of sticks with you. Even though my dad was my principal,
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: I usually rode to work with dad, but I did
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: ride the school bus some because you want to as
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: a kid. Some Ruby's dying to ride a school bus,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: but they don't have one at her school and it's
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: always sad when she sees them. But I had. Mister
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Wagnan was my school bus driver, which is interesting now
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: that I think of it, because before school buses, you
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: might have been taken to school in a wagon.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: That was pretty good. Segue man. It's been a little while, Yeah,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: it's true. Until the nineteen thirties, the late thirties, actually
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: the forties probably. Yeah. If you were a rural kid,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: a rod duror or the kid of a rod ur
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: and you wanted to get to school, you very well
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: may have been taken to school in a horse and
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: buggy essentially, or a cart, farm cart, maybe a truck,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: who knows, whatever could get you to school, that's what
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: you got to school. And because there was no federal
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: system or standardization across the United States, there was whatever
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: your school district could think of to get you to school.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: And even trying to get you to school was a
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: fairly new concept in the early twenty century after industrialization
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: drew everyone to the cities, because the school was in
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the city, that's where most people were. You know, before
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: that it was like good luck getting to school. Now
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, we really need to get you
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: to school because we have to train you to work
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: in these factories.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Dumb, dumb, exactly. Thankfully there was a gentleman and this
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: is just kind of the perfect short stuff. While we
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: invented short stuff was because of topics like this, like
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: why your school bus is yellow, It's because of a
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: man named Frank sear See y R. He was born
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: in a rural area. He was raised on a farm
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: in Nebraska, and as he grew up he got to
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: be in his bonnet to advocate for the education of
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: people in rural areas. He was a professor at Teachers College,
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Columbia University, and he started studying school transportation. He was like,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: I'm sure. He was like, you know what, I got
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: taken to school in a truck maybe or maybe it
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: was even a wagon back then. And we got a
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: real hit and miss system going on here. So we
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: need to protect kids, keep them safe on the way
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: to school. And a good way to start that is
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: nine years later, in nineteen thirty nine, he organized a
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: conference in New York City about improving and standardizing the
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: American school bus.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was a success. He didn't just get
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: crickets back. He got a lot of people, educators, people
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: who were in charge of transportation for their counties, people
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: who made buses all showed up to New York City
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  Speaker 1: in that nineteen thirty nine conference and he said, Okay,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: let's create these standards, and by the end of the conference,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: we're going to have come up with standards for school
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: buses throughout the entire United States. And now it's just like,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: you know, big whoop. But if you go back and
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: think about it, especially that this just didn't exist and
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: he created it out of thin air, it's a pretty
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: cool accomplishment actually, because he was successful immediately.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, that's why. You know, when you get on
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: a school bus, you're gonna have the same width of
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: the aisle, the seats are going to be basically the same,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: the doors and the dimensions of this stuff are going
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: to be the same. But what Frank's here is really
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: really known for is school bus yellow or the official
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: name is National school Bus Glossy Yellow.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Pretty great name.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: It's a mouthful. But the reason that that was part
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: of the standardization too was, as Frank Seer's son William
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: put it, that whenever you saw a bus that color,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: you'd think, Okay, there's a bunch of kids going somewhere. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you just associated with this. So that meant they needed
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: an eye catching color that wasn't already widely used, that
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: they could associate with school buses and that's exactly what
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: they came up with.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, as the story goes, Sere was looking at
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: colors in his office was really drawn to all these
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: colors on the orange spectrum, different kinds of yellows, yellow greens,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: stuff like that, because he wanted something that stood out.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: And at that nineteen thirty nine meeting he brought fifty cheese.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: He narrowed it down to fifty choices. I probably would
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: have brought like three maybe, but he brought fifty choices,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: hung them on the wall and said, all right, we
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: need a special committee. We're all going to decide on this.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: And they chose that sort of yellowish orange color originally
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: called National school Bus Chrome, and that was it. He
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: published a forty two page booklet saying here's the standards
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: that we're proposing, and that pamphlet was school bus yellow.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I say, we take a break and when we
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: come back, we'll explain why that was such a great
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: color for year to pick.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: Let's do it, okay, Chuck.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: So Frank Seer and his conference members at that nineteen
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: thirty nine conference, they came up with forty four dimensions
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  Speaker 1: for the school bus, or forty four standards for the
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: school bus, and one of them was school bus glossy yellow.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: And Frank Seer was not a safety expert, he was
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: not a visual scientist, he was not an optimologist. He
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: didn't know anything, but he had a good gut for
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: picking out what color would be the best one to pick,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: and that yellow was a really great color. Because as
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: this guy who's interviewed, doctor Stephen Solomon, he's an optometrist
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and founder of a company called Visibility Emotion, which is
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: a consulting group. He said that yellows are most easily
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: seen by the human eye, not just for any people
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: with normal vision, but even if you have red green
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: colored deficiency, you still see yellow. And he basically said,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: like Frank Seer stumbled upon essentially the perfect safe color.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome. I love it.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: The reason why yellow is so visible is because it
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: stimulates both the red and the green cones. We've got red, green,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: and blue cones and it just sets two of them
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: a flame. Right, So even if you have red green
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: color blindness, you can't differentiate red or green. Yellow says,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: hey what about neither? And you can still see yellow.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: I love it. So it works for almost everybody. Imagine
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: there's somebody that probably can't see yellow, right.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess, but they're probably just being contrarian.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Maybe so Frank's here passed away in nineteen ninety five,
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: but obviously was able to see his vision. I imagine
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: every time Frank's here was out on the road and
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: saw one of those yellow school buses, he probably felt
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: a little little warm in his tom thumbs. I know
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: I would. So these days, any school bus in the
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: United States of America that is sold or lease they
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: have to meet all those federal safety standards and be
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: painted that color. I do think it's funny. And we're
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: going to cover this kind of quickly. That and this
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: is something I've always wondered that they got together. They said,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: all right, let's get forty four standards, width of stuff,
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: heights of stuff. But we're all in agreement. No seat belts, right.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: I know, it's crazy.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: I've always wondered about that, but it kind of makes
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: sense when it's explained here. And by the way, big
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: thanks to Dave Ruse. This is one of his short
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: articles from housti works dot com. But school buses don't
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: drive super fast, they don't hit like when they are
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: in an accident. It's usually not the kind of thing
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: where like there's a very fast stop. They're heavy, they're slow,
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: they don't stop suddenly if there's an accident. I mean
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: they plow through whatever they're hitting. Is in reality what happens.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: So the seat belts, Like for a kid fifteen rows
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: back plowing through a Prius at twenty three miles an hour,
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: that kid's not going to go go flying, you know,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: eighteen feet through the front windshield.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: That kid'll just be like, hey, watch the speed.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Bumps, mister wagnan. But school buses are very heavily regulated
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: and very safe. They are compartmentalized, so you know, those
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: seats are very closely spaced for that reason. They have
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: energy absorbing backs for that reason. There's all sorts of
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: rollover protection and crush standards and stuff like that. So
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: school buses are safe. They just don't have seat belts.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Statistically speaking, they're safe too. Apparently in the United States,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: any given weekday, twenty six million American kids ride to
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: school on a school bus. And I looked up a
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: lot of trouble finding this, but I'm pretty sure what
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: I found was that that's more than twenty percent of
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: the people on the road in the United States and
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: any given weekday. Wow, and yet it represents less than
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: one percent of all traffic fatalities.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Now was that rush hour stats?
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I tried really hard. I couldn't
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: find anything nuanced like that. I basically had to cobble
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: it together myself. So what I found was that on
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: the on the road something like thirty six percent of
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Americans drive any given day. So I took that and
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: figured out how many Americans there are? Was thirty six
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: percent of that percentage is twenty six million that number,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: and that's where I came up with more than twenty percent.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, I like it. I think it tracks, and
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: I think that we will definitely hear from someone who
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: thinks they have found a better way to calculate that.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: But just the eyeball test. When I'm driving Ruby to
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: school in the morning, we see a lot of school buses,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: You do not want to get behind one.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: No, and you do want to stop though if that
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: arm goes out, because that is a I don't know
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: if it's true, but I heard that that is like
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: the second worst moving violation you can get behind, like
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: a dui. I don't know if that's true, but I
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: know it is a hefty fine. They don't take lightly.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: It seems like it should be. And I mean, even
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: if the cops don't get you, there's people who will
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: chase you in their car if they see you do that.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: It's a really gross violation of like social standards.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: It is you don't do that.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: No, you're like, I don't care about children's lives, is
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: what you're saying. I need to get to Starbucks, I
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: need to get to Cracker Barrel. I need to get
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: somewhere that's more important than a child's life, is what
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: you're shouting at everyone.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: You know, who else didn't care about children's lives? Is
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: that guy who kidnapped that school bus, yellow school bus
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: in Chowchilla. Yeah, buried that thing.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: That's right, You got anything else?
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: No, that's a past episode Chowchilla school kidnapping. Look it up.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: It's great.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Hats off to Frank Seer and heads off to
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Short Stuff, which is out.
• 12:07
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• 12:10
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• 12:14
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