On any road in America you will find a symbol of the country’s educational system – the yellow school bus. About half a million of these buses transport an estimated 30 million children to school and to school-related events every day.
a bit of colour
The first method of transportation for schoolchildren in America was the horse-drawn school carriage. It was introduced by a company called Wayne Works in the mid-1800s. Then, about 50 years later, people started driving motorized vehicles, and buses became popular.
In 1939, the country’s first bus safety conference was organized. There it was decided that all school buses should be painted yellow, to make them more visible, and that they should have special safety features.
safety
According to the National Safety Council, today’s school buses are 172 times safer than cars. They have sophisticated mirror systems that allow drivers to see children getting on and off the bus, for example, and many safety features that no other vehicles have.
School bus drivers in California receive more training than any other drivers in the state.
movies and cartoon characters
The yellow school bus is a feature of American life. Not surprisingly, it also appears in films and TV shows. Famous examples include the bus that the young Forrest Gump takes to get to school. The film, which was released in 1994, starred Tom Hanks and Sally Field as his mother. The school bus is also prominent in The Simpsons. Every day Bart, Lisa and the other kids risk their lives. The bus’s heavy metal-loving driver, Otto Mann, has problems with alcohol and marijuana.
interview: all aboard!
Amelia Rigney is a school bus driver for the Azusa Unified School District in Southern California. We asked her about her work:
Amelia Rigney (Standard American/Hispanic accent): It’s helping the community as far as the transportation for some of these special need kids that, you know, some of the parents don’t have transportation and they are well in need for their kids to get to school. The main focus of our district is that, you know, making sure that the kids are being able to get to school.
interaction
And the kids on her bus are of all ages, from kindergarten up to the senior year of high school:
Amelia Rigney: It’s safer in that sense to keep the little ones more... closer to you, to be able to see them and keep an eye on them. And the older ones, they maybe sit towards the back because they’re a little bit more well-behaved, but you’ve got to periodically keep an eye on them. But other than that, there’s no problems. They get to interact with one another. They mainly live close within the neighbourhood so they kind of already know each other from school, so that helps.
rewarding
And she says that she gets to grow fond of the kids:
Amelia Rigney: There are some within the years that you just really like draw to in a sense, yes. But yes, you get to know your kids and you see them grow from kindergarten all the way until they graduate. To see that, it’s rewarding to me.