'Our study clearly demonstrates that children commuting in congested urban areas such as LA may be exposed to much higher concentrations of vehicle-related pollutants inside school bus cabins than ambient air concentrations measured by central-site monitoring.' http://www.nature.com/jea/journal/v15/n5/full/7500414a.html Maybe blaming the buses would go to far, but apparently the school bus isn't safe in all regards. The concentration of pollutants is often higher in the bus than outside the bus. The researcher remarked that it also varied alot depending on the make of the school bus. In that respect I would like to add a personal observation. I noticed that schoolbuses in the US often look like they were build in the 60s or 50s even. Could that really be a sign of optimal technology in pollutant redundancy? Is it time to embrace modern technology and start ordering modern buses? (preferably from europe). Is the yellow colour of schoolbuses just another sign of 'warning, poisonous content'?
I don't have the information needed to address most of that but I CAN say all the busses are much newer than you think. Most, but not all, use a system whereby the first two digits of the bus number, as in 98-132, tell you the year the bus was made. You won't find any as old as you are talking about, it's just that the design hasn't changed too much.
When I said "design" I meant the exterior - what you can see as one goes by. That has nothing to do with the safety features of the bus. For that matter, I believe they should have seatbealts in every bus and the students should be required to be strapped in except when entering or leaving. That would also help reduce some of the behavior problems on busses as well.
Our public school systems are barely surviving monetarily NOW and no one wants to see higher taxes ...and you want to increase their burden and raise taxes, too? Surely that's just a fantasy of yours, right? ...'cause you sure can't be living in the same reality as I'm living in! Baron Max
Welcome to America, Spurious. I bet Max will be saying something shortly about how it's not right for people to pay taxes for other people's children... (Although he might go a different route since I beat him to the punch.) Anyway. Interesting research. More polluted inside the bus, eh? Wonder why? The bus acts like a pollution scoop? Well. Figure out how to build school buses that are more aerodynamic (thus reducing drag and lowering the amount of fuel needed to power them, thus reducing overal cost.) And then take the old buses and convert them into traveling pollution filters. Figure out a way to suck the pollution out of the air of the bus and sequester it away and then drive the buses all over the city sucking up pollution... (Although. I suppose if there were a feasible means of 'pollution sequestering' then all automobiles could sequester their own pollution and dump them off when they fill up with fuel or something....) As an aside, I've been living about 40 miles away from the city lately and have gotten used to the fresh air. Now I'm commuting into the city and the smell of exhaust fumes is rather sickening. Funny I never noticed it before. However, I live in Seattle and we don't suffer the same level of smog that LA does. I've only been to LA once but the smog was BAD. I mean just a couple car lengths away was obscured with smog. That's ridiculous.
Pardon me, but you don't seem to realize that schoolbusses are already the absolute safest form of tansportation in the nation. Yes, there are accidents now and then but they also drive a combined million or more miles every day with hardly a problem. Compare them to planes, trains, automobiles, bikes, whatever, and you'll see what I mean. Besides, it seems like your primary question is why are we still using ones made in the 1950s. And I think that's been explained very clearly.
Well, there all kinds of safety. We were mainly touching the subject of air pollutants. I doubt a seat belt will protect anyone from air pollutants.
Perhaps we should not allow children in areas of high air pollution like L.A.? Maybe make it a law .....people who live in certain ranges of air pollution can't have children. Then we'd 'kill two birds with one stone', huh? ...maybe several birds with one stone? Baron Max
And so, coming from a member living in a country where there are as good as no school buses: spuriousmonkey wrote... Perhaps it is going too far damning the busses, but maybe the maintainers are to blame? Those who live outside the US, when were your school busses built? Do you even have school busses? I'm sure they're not a common occurence in Europe! Or maybe I'm wrong
Because people don't live 3 million miles apart. The walk to school most often (where I come from). I personally lived accros my elementary school.
