For some reason, I’ve been thinking about school busses this morning.

The fact that they havent really changed much in about 40 years certainly
makes them iconic. It seems like it would be interesting just to use a stock
school bus as part of an art installation. Or if you want to go even further,
load up a crowd of 60 or so and go for a ride. If you could drop people off
near there houses, it would be even better.

School busses seem to have an interesting property of being
sort of a portal between institutions. The goal is to get you away from
one institution (school) and to another (home) (or vice versa). The
“rules” of school bus life are kind of an odd mix between the two.
Lots of transitional behaviour is kind of enforced by a ride on a schoolbus.
Why was the ride into school always so much calmer than the ride home?

The act of picking someone up or dropping them off at or near
their house in the presence of others is another aspect of that
transition role of busses. Without the schoolbus, most children would
have no idea how 99% of their classmates lived. Where I grew up,
it wasnt uncommon for a schoolbus to drop off a few kids in a country
club, then drive a few more miles and drop off a few kids in a trailer park.

And talking about institutions, the whole act of attempting to avoid
“missing the bus” has a pretty strong “hidden curriculum” vibe
to it.

I also find it interesting that for many people in their youth, it was quite
possible that school busses were the harshest enviroment they were
subjected to. Both enviromentally (loud, full of vibrations, often
extremely hot or cold, etc) and socially (mixed age groups,
implied competion for resources (seating), and a almost
“lawless” vibe at times). So putting someone on a school bus
is pretty likely to trigger some long forgetten memories of that
harshness. I suspect most adults have either been in, or witnessed
a fight on a school bus as a child.

And from a engineering/design standpoint school busses intrique me.
It always seems odd to me when things do not change. Especially considering
the school bus design is hardly “perfect”. They are prone to catastrophic
fires, they oftend dont have seatbelts, most are poorly heated/cooled, etc.
Granted, there have been some band-aid style attempts to fix some of
these issues, but the general design of the school bus is still the same.

And lets not even get stared with the “short bus”