WEBVTT - Why Are American School Buses Yellow?

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff.

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<v Speaker 1>Lauren vogelbam here and I am recording this episode live

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<v Speaker 1>from the iHeart Podcasts Studio powered by Bows at the

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<v Speaker 1>House of Music at the iHeartRadio Music Festival, which is wild.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm in a little glass box at a music festival

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<v Speaker 1>recording podcasts. But yes, okay, So you know how every

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<v Speaker 1>single school bus in the United States is painted the

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<v Speaker 1>exact same color. This hue is officially known as National

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<v Speaker 1>school Bus Glossy Yellow. But it wasn't always that way.

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<v Speaker 1>A century ago, kids were transported to school by all

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<v Speaker 1>kinds of random vehicles. Because there were no federal standards.

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<v Speaker 1>It was up to states or individual school districts to

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<v Speaker 1>hire buses or trucks or horse drawn wagons to fairy

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<v Speaker 1>kids to and from school. I couldn't figure out if

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<v Speaker 1>anyone actually used fairies. I did look, But in the

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<v Speaker 1>nineteenth thirties, a man by the name of Frank Sear

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<v Speaker 1>didn't like the system. He was a professor at Columbia

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<v Speaker 1>University's Teachers College and an advocate for rural education. Sear

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<v Speaker 1>traveled the country conducting a study of school transportation, and

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<v Speaker 1>upon finding that safety standards were often hit or miss,

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<v Speaker 1>he decided that something needed to be done to keep

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<v Speaker 1>America's school kids safe. So in nineteen thirty nine, Seer

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<v Speaker 1>organized a conference in New York City dedicated to improving

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<v Speaker 1>and standardizing the American school bus. He invited educators, state

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<v Speaker 1>transportation officials, and bus manufacturers to help design a newer,

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<v Speaker 1>safer school bus. At that historic meeting, conference attendees proposed

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<v Speaker 1>forty four national standards for the modern school bus, from

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<v Speaker 1>its dimensions to its doors to the width of its aisle.

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<v Speaker 1>But the standard that made Seer famous was school bus yellow.

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<v Speaker 1>According to William Seer, Frank's son, his father set out

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<v Speaker 1>to find a school bus color that would not only

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<v Speaker 1>be easily the from a distance, but also distinctive. William

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<v Speaker 1>told The New York Times back in twenty thirteen quote,

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<v Speaker 1>they wanted a color that would stand out, that other

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<v Speaker 1>drivers could see from a distance, and that would be

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<v Speaker 1>identified with a school bus, so whenever we saw it

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<v Speaker 1>would think there's a group of kids going someplace. Before

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<v Speaker 1>that they sent kids to school and anything. Before the conference,

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<v Speaker 1>Frank Seer laid out color samples on his office desk

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<v Speaker 1>and instinctively gravitated toward orange. Adjacent shades a spectrum of

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<v Speaker 1>colors ranging from deep orange red to bright lemony yellow.

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<v Speaker 1>At that nineteen thirty nine meeting, Sear hung up fifty

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<v Speaker 1>paint swatches on the walls of the conference room and

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<v Speaker 1>selected a special committee to pick a winner. They chose

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<v Speaker 1>the iconic orange yellow hue that was originally known as

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<v Speaker 1>National school Bus Chrome, so called because it was this

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<v Speaker 1>lead based paint made with chromium. However, because lead based

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<v Speaker 1>paint is toxic and chromium can damage DNA in the

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<v Speaker 1>lungs if it's inhaled, the formulation for school bus yellow

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<v Speaker 1>it was changed in the intervening decades, and yeate for that.

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<v Speaker 1>At the close of the conference, Sear published a forty

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<v Speaker 1>two page booklet proposing the nation's first school bus standards,

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<v Speaker 1>and the cover of the booklet was, of course, school

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<v Speaker 1>bus yellow. Seer wasn't a scientist or a safety expert,

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<v Speaker 1>but he instinctively made the connection between bright colors, visibility

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<v Speaker 1>and vehicle safety. For the articles episodes based on How

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<v Speaker 1>Stuff Works, spoke with doctor Stephen Solomon, a retired optometrist

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<v Speaker 1>and founder of Visibility in Motion, which does consulting for

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<v Speaker 1>emergency services providers. He said, based upon the standards of

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<v Speaker 1>nineteen thirty nine, yellow was a very intelligent choice. The

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<v Speaker 1>colors that are most easily seen by the human eye

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<v Speaker 1>are the yellows, the yellow green to yellow to greenish yellow.

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<v Speaker 1>That's at the peak of the visibility spectrum. There's no

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<v Speaker 1>color that attracts more attention or is more conspicuous than

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<v Speaker 1>the yellows. The human eye is literally less sensitive to

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<v Speaker 1>colors on the ends of the visible light spectrum, that is,

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<v Speaker 1>blues and violets on one end, and oranges and reds

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<v Speaker 1>on the other. Our color vision is determined by photoreceptor

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<v Speaker 1>cells in the retina called cones. There are three types

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<v Speaker 1>of cones, each tuned to detect different wavelengths of light, red, green,

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<v Speaker 1>or blue. Yellow light stimulates both the red and green

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<v Speaker 1>cone simultaneously, which is why the eye is most sensitive

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<v Speaker 1>to colors in the yellow range. Adding to this, about

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<v Speaker 1>eight percent of men and zero point five percent of

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<v Speaker 1>women are red green color deficient, meaning they have difficulty

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<v Speaker 1>differentiating between reds and greens, often observing both as sort

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<v Speaker 1>of bland looking. The seer probably didn't even consider this,

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<v Speaker 1>in which case it's a stroke of luck that research

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<v Speaker 1>has shown that under all testing conditions, golden yellow is

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<v Speaker 1>the most easily visible color for both people with color

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<v Speaker 1>deficiency and for people without it. Frank Seer died in

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<v Speaker 1>nineteen ninety five, but he lived to see his yellow

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<v Speaker 1>school buses become the national standard and an American icon.

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<v Speaker 1>According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA,

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<v Speaker 1>any new school bus sold or leased in America must

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<v Speaker 1>meet all federal safety standards, including that bumblebee paint job. A.

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<v Speaker 1>While yellow paint certainly makes school buses more visible and recognizable,

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<v Speaker 1>there's a lot more that goes into making them safe.

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<v Speaker 1>The NHTSA rightly calls school buses the most regulated vehicles

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<v Speaker 1>on the road because modern school buses are equipped with

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<v Speaker 1>safety features like high crush standards, rollover protections, flashing red lights,

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<v Speaker 1>and those stop sign arms. That's because school buses carry

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<v Speaker 1>precious cargo. More than twenty six million American kids ride

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<v Speaker 1>to school each day in some four hundred and eighty

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<v Speaker 1>thousand school buses, and thankfully, less than one percent of

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<v Speaker 1>all traffic fatalities involve children on a school bus. If

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<v Speaker 1>they're so safe, though, why don't all school buses have

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<v Speaker 1>seat belts. We have a whole other episode on that,

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<v Speaker 1>but basically, school buses are big and heavy, so they

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<v Speaker 1>don't stop as suddenly in an actident, and thanks for

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<v Speaker 1>design concept cold compartmentalization, children are protected from injury during

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<v Speaker 1>a crash by closely spaced seats with energy absorbing seatbacks.

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<v Speaker 1>Buses that weigh less than ten thousand pounds or about

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<v Speaker 1>forty five hundred kilos are required to have seat belts,

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<v Speaker 1>by the way, But okay, another side question. If yellow

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<v Speaker 1>is the most visible color, why are fire trucks still red.

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<v Speaker 1>Fire trucks have been painted red for more than a century,

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<v Speaker 1>though no one is sure how the custom began. From

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<v Speaker 1>a safety and visibility perspective, red is not a great choice.

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<v Speaker 1>Red shades are far less visible than yellows during the

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<v Speaker 1>day and virtually disappear at night. Starting in the nineteen seventies,

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<v Speaker 1>some fire departments switched to bright lime yellow for increased visibility,

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<v Speaker 1>and their safety record is impressive. In the nineteen nineties,

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<v Speaker 1>Solomon and a colleague conducted research comparing the accident rates

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<v Speaker 1>of traditional red fire trucks versus the new yellow engines.

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<v Speaker 1>When one fired apartment in Dallas, Texas, used both red

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<v Speaker 1>and lime yellow fleets. The red trucks were involved in

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<v Speaker 1>accidents at three times the rate of yellow vehicles. Still,

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<v Speaker 1>lots of fire departments are hesitant to make the change.

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<v Speaker 1>In two thousand and nine, the US Fire Administration, a

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<v Speaker 1>division of FEMA, released a report confirming that bright yellow

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<v Speaker 1>and fluorescent colors were more visible than red, but the

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<v Speaker 1>agency didn't recommend a wholesale switch to yellow trucks. Their

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<v Speaker 1>report basically said that people identify fire apparatus with the

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<v Speaker 1>color red, and it's important to have people able to

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<v Speaker 1>quickly identify emergency vehicles in emergency situations. Of course, fire

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<v Speaker 1>trucks also have allowed sirens to warn drivers and pedestrians

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<v Speaker 1>about their approach, unlike school buses, although in some circumstances

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<v Speaker 1>and levels of rowdiness the last day's school maybe a

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<v Speaker 1>warning siren could be appropriate on school buses as well.

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<v Speaker 1>Today's episode was recorded live at the iHeart Podcasts Studio

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<v Speaker 1>powered by Bose at the House of Music at iHeartRadio

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<v Speaker 1>Music Festival. It's based on the article why are school

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<v Speaker 1>Buses yellow? On how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Dave Ruse.

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<v Speaker 1>Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks

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<v Speaker 1>dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more

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<v Speaker 1>podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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<v Speaker 1>or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.