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Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and

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Speaker 1: there's Chuck, and there's Cherry and the driver's seat hopping along,

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Speaker 1: bouncing along in our little stuff. You should know school bus.

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Speaker 2: Two quick questions off the top. Did you ever have

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Speaker 2: to ride a school bus to school with regularity?

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Speaker 1: I've got two words for that.

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Speaker 2: Oh yes, and please tell me you do. Do you

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Speaker 2: remember the name of your school bus driver?

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Speaker 1: I got several words.

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Speaker 2: No.

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Speaker 1: I feel really bad that I don't now that you ask,

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Speaker 1: But no, I don't remember the name of my school

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Speaker 1: bus driver.

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Speaker 2: Oh that's okay. You may have had several. I have

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Speaker 2: a theory that like a school bus driver, if you

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Speaker 2: have the same one as one of those, that kind

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Speaker 2: of sticks with you. Even though my dad was my principal,

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Speaker 2: I usually rode to work with dad, but I did

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Speaker 2: ride the school bus some because you want to as

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Speaker 2: a kid. Some Ruby's dying to ride a school bus,

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Speaker 2: but they don't have one at her school and it's

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Speaker 2: always sad when she sees them. But I had. Mister

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Speaker 2: Wagnan was my school bus driver, which is interesting now

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Speaker 2: that I think of it, because before school buses, you

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Speaker 2: might have been taken to school in a wagon.

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Speaker 1: That was pretty good. Segue man. It's been a little while, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's true. Until the nineteen thirties, the late thirties, actually

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Speaker 1: the forties probably. Yeah. If you were a rural kid,

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Speaker 1: a rod duror or the kid of a rod ur

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Speaker 1: and you wanted to get to school, you very well

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Speaker 1: may have been taken to school in a horse and

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Speaker 1: buggy essentially, or a cart, farm cart, maybe a truck,

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Speaker 1: who knows, whatever could get you to school, that's what

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Speaker 1: you got to school. And because there was no federal

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Speaker 1: system or standardization across the United States, there was whatever

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Speaker 1: your school district could think of to get you to school.

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Speaker 1: And even trying to get you to school was a

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Speaker 1: fairly new concept in the early twenty century after industrialization

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Speaker 1: drew everyone to the cities, because the school was in

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Speaker 1: the city, that's where most people were. You know, before

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Speaker 1: that it was like good luck getting to school. Now

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Speaker 1: I was like, okay, we really need to get you

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Speaker 1: to school because we have to train you to work

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Speaker 1: in these factories.

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Speaker 2: Dumb, dumb, exactly. Thankfully there was a gentleman and this

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Speaker 2: is just kind of the perfect short stuff. While we

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Speaker 2: invented short stuff was because of topics like this, like

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Speaker 2: why your school bus is yellow, It's because of a

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Speaker 2: man named Frank sear See y R. He was born

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Speaker 2: in a rural area. He was raised on a farm

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Speaker 2: in Nebraska, and as he grew up he got to

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Speaker 2: be in his bonnet to advocate for the education of

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Speaker 2: people in rural areas. He was a professor at Teachers College,

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Speaker 2: Columbia University, and he started studying school transportation. He was like,

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Speaker 2: I'm sure. He was like, you know what, I got

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Speaker 2: taken to school in a truck maybe or maybe it

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Speaker 2: was even a wagon back then. And we got a

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Speaker 2: real hit and miss system going on here. So we

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Speaker 2: need to protect kids, keep them safe on the way

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Speaker 2: to school. And a good way to start that is

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Speaker 2: nine years later, in nineteen thirty nine, he organized a

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Speaker 2: conference in New York City about improving and standardizing the

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Speaker 2: American school bus.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was a success. He didn't just get

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Speaker 1: crickets back. He got a lot of people, educators, people

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Speaker 1: who were in charge of transportation for their counties, people

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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,

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Speaker 1: let's create these standards, and by the end of the conference,

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Speaker 1: we're going to have come up with standards for school

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Speaker 1: buses throughout the entire United States. And now it's just like,

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Speaker 1: you know, big whoop. But if you go back and

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Speaker 1: think about it, especially that this just didn't exist and

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Speaker 1: he created it out of thin air, it's a pretty

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Speaker 1: cool accomplishment actually, because he was successful immediately.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, that's why. You know, when you get on

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Speaker 2: a school bus, you're gonna have the same width of

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Speaker 2: the aisle, the seats are going to be basically the same,

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Speaker 2: the doors and the dimensions of this stuff are going

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Speaker 2: to be the same. But what Frank's here is really

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Speaker 2: really known for is school bus yellow or the official

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Speaker 2: name is National school Bus Glossy Yellow.

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Speaker 1: Pretty great name.

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Speaker 2: I love it.

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Speaker 1: It's a mouthful. But the reason that that was part

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Speaker 1: of the standardization too was, as Frank Seer's son William

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Speaker 1: put it, that whenever you saw a bus that color,

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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

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Speaker 1: an eye catching color that wasn't already widely used, that

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Speaker 1: they could associate with school buses and that's exactly what

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Speaker 1: they came up with.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So, as the story goes, Sere was looking at

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Speaker 2: colors in his office was really drawn to all these

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Speaker 2: colors on the orange spectrum, different kinds of yellows, yellow greens,

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Speaker 2: stuff like that, because he wanted something that stood out.

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Speaker 2: And at that nineteen thirty nine meeting he brought fifty cheese.

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Speaker 2: He narrowed it down to fifty choices. I probably would

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Speaker 2: have brought like three maybe, but he brought fifty choices,

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Speaker 2: hung them on the wall and said, all right, we

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Speaker 2: need a special committee. We're all going to decide on this.

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Speaker 2: And they chose that sort of yellowish orange color originally

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Speaker 2: called National school Bus Chrome, and that was it. He

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Speaker 2: published a forty two page booklet saying here's the standards

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Speaker 2: that we're proposing, and that pamphlet was school bus yellow.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I say, we take a break and when we

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Speaker 1: come back, we'll explain why that was such a great

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Speaker 1: color for year to pick.

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Speaker 3: Let's do it, okay, Chuck.

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Speaker 1: So Frank Seer and his conference members at that nineteen

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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

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Speaker 1: school bus, and one of them was school bus glossy yellow.

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Speaker 1: And Frank Seer was not a safety expert, he was

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Speaker 1: not a visual scientist, he was not an optimologist. He

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Speaker 1: didn't know anything, but he had a good gut for

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Speaker 1: picking out what color would be the best one to pick,

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Speaker 1: and that yellow was a really great color. Because as

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Speaker 1: this guy who's interviewed, doctor Stephen Solomon, he's an optometrist

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Speaker 1: and founder of a company called Visibility Emotion, which is

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Speaker 1: a consulting group. He said that yellows are most easily

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Speaker 1: seen by the human eye, not just for any people

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Speaker 1: with normal vision, but even if you have red green

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Speaker 1: colored deficiency, you still see yellow. And he basically said,

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Speaker 1: like Frank Seer stumbled upon essentially the perfect safe color.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome. I love it.

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Speaker 1: The reason why yellow is so visible is because it

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Speaker 1: stimulates both the red and the green cones. We've got red, green,

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Speaker 1: and blue cones and it just sets two of them

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Speaker 1: a flame. Right, So even if you have red green

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Speaker 1: color blindness, you can't differentiate red or green. Yellow says,

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Speaker 1: hey what about neither? And you can still see yellow.

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Speaker 2: I love it. So it works for almost everybody. Imagine

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Speaker 2: there's somebody that probably can't see yellow, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess, but they're probably just being contrarian.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Maybe so Frank's here passed away in nineteen ninety five,

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Speaker 2: but obviously was able to see his vision. I imagine

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Speaker 2: every time Frank's here was out on the road and

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Speaker 2: saw one of those yellow school buses, he probably felt

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Speaker 2: a little little warm in his tom thumbs. I know

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Speaker 2: I would. So these days, any school bus in the

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Speaker 2: United States of America that is sold or lease they

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Speaker 2: have to meet all those federal safety standards and be

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Speaker 2: painted that color. I do think it's funny. And we're

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Speaker 2: going to cover this kind of quickly. That and this

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Speaker 2: is something I've always wondered that they got together. They said,

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Speaker 2: all right, let's get forty four standards, width of stuff,

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Speaker 2: heights of stuff. But we're all in agreement. No seat belts, right.

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Speaker 1: I know, it's crazy.

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Speaker 2: I've always wondered about that, but it kind of makes

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Speaker 2: sense when it's explained here. And by the way, big

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Speaker 2: thanks to Dave Ruse. This is one of his short

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Speaker 2: articles from housti works dot com. But school buses don't

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Speaker 2: drive super fast, they don't hit like when they are

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Speaker 2: in an accident. It's usually not the kind of thing

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Speaker 2: where like there's a very fast stop. They're heavy, they're slow,

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Speaker 2: they don't stop suddenly if there's an accident. I mean

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Speaker 2: they plow through whatever they're hitting. Is in reality what happens.

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Speaker 2: So the seat belts, Like for a kid fifteen rows

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Speaker 2: back plowing through a Prius at twenty three miles an hour,

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Speaker 2: that kid's not going to go go flying, you know,

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Speaker 2: eighteen feet through the front windshield.

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Speaker 1: That kid'll just be like, hey, watch the speed.

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Speaker 2: Bumps, mister wagnan. But school buses are very heavily regulated

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Speaker 2: and very safe. They are compartmentalized, so you know, those

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Speaker 2: seats are very closely spaced for that reason. They have

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Speaker 2: energy absorbing backs for that reason. There's all sorts of

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Speaker 2: rollover protection and crush standards and stuff like that. So

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Speaker 2: school buses are safe. They just don't have seat belts.

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Speaker 1: Statistically speaking, they're safe too. Apparently in the United States,

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Speaker 1: any given weekday, twenty six million American kids ride to

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Speaker 1: school on a school bus. And I looked up a

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Speaker 1: lot of trouble finding this, but I'm pretty sure what

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Speaker 1: I found was that that's more than twenty percent of

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Speaker 1: the people on the road in the United States and

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Speaker 1: any given weekday. Wow, and yet it represents less than

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Speaker 1: one percent of all traffic fatalities.

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Speaker 2: Now was that rush hour stats?

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Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I tried really hard. I couldn't

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Speaker 1: find anything nuanced like that. I basically had to cobble

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Speaker 1: it together myself. So what I found was that on

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Speaker 1: the on the road something like thirty six percent of

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Speaker 1: Americans drive any given day. So I took that and

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Speaker 1: figured out how many Americans there are? Was thirty six

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Speaker 1: percent of that percentage is twenty six million that number,

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Speaker 1: and that's where I came up with more than twenty percent.

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Speaker 2: No, no, no, I like it. I think it tracks, and

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Speaker 2: I think that we will definitely hear from someone who

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Speaker 2: thinks they have found a better way to calculate that.

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Speaker 2: But just the eyeball test. When I'm driving Ruby to

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Speaker 2: school in the morning, we see a lot of school buses,

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, everywhere.

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Speaker 1: You do not want to get behind one.

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Speaker 2: No, and you do want to stop though if that

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Speaker 2: arm goes out, because that is a I don't know

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Speaker 2: if it's true, but I heard that that is like

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Speaker 2: the second worst moving violation you can get behind, like

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Speaker 2: a dui. I don't know if that's true, but I

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Speaker 2: know it is a hefty fine. They don't take lightly.

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Speaker 1: It seems like it should be. And I mean, even

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Speaker 1: if the cops don't get you, there's people who will

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Speaker 1: chase you in their car if they see you do that.

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Speaker 1: It's a really gross violation of like social standards.

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Speaker 2: It is you don't do that.

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Speaker 1: No, you're like, I don't care about children's lives, is

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Speaker 1: what you're saying. I need to get to Starbucks, I

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Speaker 1: need to get to Cracker Barrel. I need to get

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Speaker 1: somewhere that's more important than a child's life, is what

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Speaker 1: you're shouting at everyone.

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Speaker 2: You know, who else didn't care about children's lives? Is

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Speaker 2: that guy who kidnapped that school bus, yellow school bus

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Speaker 2: in Chowchilla. Yeah, buried that thing.

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Speaker 1: That's right, You got anything else?

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Speaker 2: No, that's a past episode Chowchilla school kidnapping. Look it up.

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Speaker 2: It's great.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Hats off to Frank Seer and heads off to

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Speaker 1: Short Stuff, which is out.

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Speaker 2: Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 2: more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,