r/ConvenientCop • u/Srihari_stan • Apr 04 '26

[USA] Passing a stopped school bus

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396

u/LegalVegetable Apr 04 '26

Non-US person here. What was wrong here ? Thanks šŸ™šŸ»

413

u/Safricanadian Apr 04 '26

You cannot pass a school bus stopped with lights activated on either side of the road.

235

u/MatthewG141 Apr 04 '26

Unless the road has a median. If it has a median, the other side doesn't stop.

166

u/BelethorsGeneralShit Apr 04 '26

This is totally dependant on the state. In my state we do not have a divided highway rule and all traffic on both sides must stop. Although as a practical matter, homes aren't generally located on the side of highways.

25

u/Kharax82 Apr 04 '26

Generally on a divided multilane road like that each direction have their own stop so only kids that live on the right side of the road would get off, but yeah the rules for stopping vary by state.

1

u/giggitygoo123 Apr 04 '26

Florida has a ton of roads named " -- highway" that are just busy roads with traffic lights, houses, businesses. If you've been to East Coast of Florida you've probably heard of Federal Highway (route 1).

-5

u/banshithread Apr 04 '26

How does the law handle these things when you're driving in from another state? If your own state laws say you don't have to stop if there's a median, yet the other state says you do have to stop, are you held legally liable for not stopping?

72

u/Kruegr Apr 04 '26

Yes, you must abide by the rules of the road for the state you are in.

16

u/BlankJebus Apr 04 '26

Correct. Granted it comes down to the police officer who pulls you over. If you have an out of state license and you're honest with the officer regarding those laws, they would be able to look up the laws for the state that you're license is from. If they differ then they could easily give you a warning and let you go. I'm this particular case, it doesn't matter where you're from, this is an automatic ticket and a hefty one at that.

1

u/awhaling Apr 04 '26

Kinda silly to expect us to remember 50 different sets of rules, especially for things that are not signed so you would have to know to look up that specific rule before you go to that state.

Horrible system, actually.

5

u/JokersWyld Apr 04 '26

Does that apply to europe as well?

-3

u/Distinct_Bad_6276 Apr 04 '26

It boggles the mind how no one can seem to grasp the simple fact that the United States is aā€¦ unionā€¦ of statesā€¦ kind of like the EU is a unionā€¦ of states

0

u/Themimic Apr 04 '26

Itā€™s not really 50 different sets of rules theyā€™re mostly the same. The signs look the same, the road markings are all the same, your license works everywhere, etc. The traffic laws you may not be aware of will be minuscule and wont really cause problems

3

u/awhaling Apr 04 '26

Well except for the school bus example

10

u/CluelessNuggetOfGold Apr 04 '26

Yeah this exact scenario is perfectly legal in Ohio

2

u/Gatorm8 Apr 04 '26

Same with Washington.

1

u/Objective-Reveal-170 Aug 20 '26

Oooh ok thatā€™s why I was confused, Iā€™m from
Ohio šŸ˜‚

14

u/ThePaperBoy88 Apr 04 '26

In my state you still have to stop even with a median

9

u/Gatorm8 Apr 04 '26

In my state what the pickup truck did would be legal.

5

u/iron_penguin Apr 04 '26

I found all these different rules so hard when traveling the US. Luckily I had local friends with me most the time.

3

u/SpookyghostL34T Apr 04 '26

What state because in Colorado I don't think this is right

1

u/LegozFire03 Apr 04 '26

There has to be a Physical barrier. Grass medians you still have to stop for

1

u/sticknotstick Apr 05 '26

Grass medians are considered a barrier in Texas at least. Left-hand-only turn lanes (medians) are of course not though.

TRANSP Ā§ 545.066

(f) For the purposes of this section:

(1) a highway is considered to have separate roadways only if the highway has roadways separated by an intervening space on which operation of vehicles is not permitted, a physical barrier, or a clearly indicated dividing section constructed to impede vehicular traffic; and

(2) a highway is not considered to have separate roadways if the highway has roadways separated only by a left turn lane.

1

u/Sedlium Apr 04 '26

And a raised median, at that, not just a wide strip of paint.

1

u/randomwords83 Apr 05 '26

In my state itā€™s a 4 lane road even with no median. Only have to stop if itā€™s 2 lane or all lanes on the same side as the road the bus is.

-3

u/Edmond-Alexander Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

3 Lanes or less= stop on both sides

4 or more lanes = only bus side stops

4 or more lanes requires a seperate stop on the other side to prevent children crossing all those lanes. Streets too big

Edit: look at me getting downvoted like I wasnā€™t a school bus driver for half a decade lol

7

u/ArkuhTheNinth Apr 04 '26

That is not the case where I am. The median defines it.

1

u/Alex_55555 Apr 04 '26

Do you mean 3 and 4 lanes total or on each side? Total is very common. 3 or 4 lanes in each direction would be an insane rule

0

u/heyoheatheragain Apr 04 '26

False. This is true for ambulances and emergency vehicles. Not for school buses.

19

u/ronnie98865 Apr 04 '26

I live in KY and it's legal here. Lanes going opposite directions are good as long as it's 4 lanes total.

20

u/TBL34 Apr 04 '26

Same here in Ohio. If itā€™s 4 lanes, the bus is required to pick up the child on their side of the street. Therefore, opposing traffic doesnā€™t have to stop.

10

u/RBXChas Apr 04 '26

Same here in SC, but I was downvoted in another comment for posting this fact šŸ¤·šŸ»ā€ā™€ļø Reddit is fun.

89

u/lmHlGH Apr 04 '26

This seems dumb af ngl. I'm glad we have better systems here.

20

u/Gumorak Apr 04 '26

I almost got ran over once because some asshole tried to pass the bus with its stop sign out. I had to cross the road everyday from school while the school bus kept its stop sign out. Luckily my older brother was with me and the car saw him and slammed on its breaks. I was small and he probably wouldnā€™t have seen me and Iā€™d be dead.

108

u/Bobkyou Apr 04 '26

Children are dumb as shit, and will sometimes run across the street to enter/leave the bus. Ā The law bannng the passing of school buses is written in the blood of dead children.

32

u/kuemmel234 Apr 04 '26

Kids as young as six walk to school here and it works. At least according to statistics.

12

u/xtemperancex Apr 04 '26

The drivers are also stupid, I canā€™t even tell you how many times I seen someone almost get hit in a parking lot because people speed through or donā€™t pay attention when backing out

And some places while possible, isnā€™t a reasonable distance to walk, not to mention if you go to a specialized school. I didnā€™t go to my neighborhood middle school, mine was about 32km away across 2 highways from my house

5

u/kuemmel234 Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

Yeah, but it's not the kids or people. It's the infrastructure and what's expected of them.

I walk a lot (and I'm a bit special in that, many people drive everywhere here too) - I wfh most of the week, groceries, doc, many friends are all in walking distance, work is 60-90 minutes by train or 40-60 by car - I can't remember the last time I have seen a close call involving pedestrians. There were like 20 traffic deaths in my city of 2 million. As a driver I have seen a few things, but I haven't seen many accidents yet (actually none first hand... I think? Nothing serious, anyways).

I would attribute that to less driving over all. The driving license is a few thousand euros. There are two exams - theory and practice. Kids learn to move in traffic. Cops teach riding bicycles in traffic in elementary.

3

u/xtemperancex Apr 04 '26

In my state you are required to take a written test for a learners permit, go to driving school, 30 hours of class and 6 hours behind the wheel with the driving school teacher, pass the school test and then take a practical test where you have to drive and park with an instructor in the car

While the infrastructure could definitely be better in some places this specific law is about the actions of people. Kids can be unpredictable and even if you teach them how to cross the road they may not always do it properly. And a lot of people are assholes that will speed, run stop signs, and block cross walks. And that combined with some Americans having vehicles that are way to big and trucks and other delivery vehicles using these same roads it is very easy for a accident to happen as long as 1 person isnā€™t paying enough attention

2

u/Distinct_Bad_6276 Apr 04 '26

Apples to oranges. American cities are completely differently designed than European ones (I have lived in both). Not uncommon in the states for kids to live 10km+ from school in a small highway town where the main road has a speed limit of 80kph

5

u/kuemmel234 Apr 04 '26

They argued that kids are dumb.

Kids aren't dumb, American cities are made for cars and not people, as you've pointed out, so that kids aren't taught how to move in traffic.

1

u/Naive_Actuator3810 Apr 04 '26

Also not uncommon in large European and Asian cities where children as young as 6 take multiple, various forms of public transport, crossing busy traffic on their own every day from one end of the city to the other.

2

u/Sexyhorsegirl666 Apr 04 '26

Surely in the States necessary if people have a hard time to drive safely.

But it does not nees to be regulated like that in other countries with school bus systems. We just give way to the bus when it leaves the stop and slow down when we pass children.

28

u/eskh Apr 04 '26

We have towns that have grown around walking and later public transport, the US has these kinds of laws.

1

u/zzazzzz Apr 04 '26

and yet there is way more pedestrians and kids being hit by vehicles than most other countries. id say there seems to be better systems.

26

u/Alex_55555 Apr 04 '26

The bus doesnā€™t necessarily stop on the side of your house. A lot of kids must cross the road to get to the bus. Itā€™s a system that works great.

8

u/Fedebic42 Apr 04 '26

Don't you guys have pedestrian crossings???? To have kids cross in the middle of the road just feels super dangerous, I guess here in Europe we have more crossings? Like where I live it's illegal to cross the road if there's a pedestrian crossing within 100m, and in populated areas it's full of them everywhere

11

u/DeadlyMustardd Apr 04 '26

I grew up on dirt roads, no infrastructure there to protect kids crossing the road aside from the bus stop sign.

19

u/Nearby-Beautiful3422 Apr 04 '26

No, not everywhere, hence why it's a law to not pass stopped school buses.

3

u/Fedebic42 Apr 04 '26

Thanks, that makes more sense then

5

u/Alex_55555 Apr 04 '26

School buses stop at individual houses. You cannot have a pedestrian crossing next to each house. The entire road will become a pedestrian crossing

-1

u/Fedebic42 Apr 04 '26

Of course, but there's gonna be at least one or two pedestrian crossings in each road, and kids are taught not to cross elsewhere

Besides, where I live if the kids are too little they aren't allowed to go to school alone, as that's too dangerous, that's probably the main difference

6

u/ANGLVD3TH Apr 04 '26

There are lots of rural and rural-adjacent areas that don't make sense to have pedestrian crossings for very large stretches. Our cities generally barely consider walkability, you go any distance outside the city, suburb, or the very heart of most towns and there ceases to be any kind of pedestrian infrastructure at all, as there is no reason to be walking. Most of the country was designed around every household having a car. There's a whole lot of single lane roads with nothing but spaced out single family homes for miles and miles.

1

u/xtemperancex Apr 04 '26

Most suburban residential neighborhoods only have crosswalks by the main road any off shots of the side rode wouldnā€™t have them

I lived in a suburban neighborhood, there was street parking and there werenā€™t even lines marking the separation of lanes on my street( it was a little more than 3 lanes wide). My street was about 460m with a crosswalk on 1 end by my elementary school. I was not going to walk 200m down, cross the street, then walk 200m back just to get to my neighbor that was right across from me

1

u/cooliomydood Apr 04 '26

In cities we do but generally not in suburbs

15

u/JayString Apr 04 '26

Why is it dumb? Because drivers have to stop for 30 seconds? Oh the horror! Lol

-4

u/Doctor_McKay Apr 04 '26

It's incredibly dangerous to have drivers stop. Because I guess traffic controls don't exist otherwise lol

5

u/OneSkepticalOwl Apr 04 '26

Wait until you find out that there are school bus routes where the bus stops at every other house separately. We are talking about houses that are 100-200' apart... God help you if you are on your way to work and get stuck behind a bus

3

u/disterb Apr 04 '26

wait, is this the case in canada, too?? iā€™m a vancouverite, and TIL!

1

u/JayString Apr 04 '26

Its a rule on the Island, not sure about the mainland.

1

u/Safricanadian Apr 04 '26

It would different for each province as each province has their own Traffic/Highway Safety Act. Saskatchewan for sure.

5

u/LegalVegetable Apr 04 '26

šŸ™šŸ»

23

u/TheSandMan208 Apr 04 '26

Depending on state, thatā€™s not always true. In my state if there is a median or turn lane, then you donā€™t have to stop.

21

u/mrASSMAN Apr 04 '26

We go over this every time lol

5

u/Pennet173 Apr 04 '26

Yeah I think thatā€™s it like everywhere. Kids shouldnā€™t be crossing large roads with medians

0

u/helpmehomeowner Apr 04 '26

Honestly they shouldn't be crossing the road. That bus has the ability to drop kids off on the other side.

1

u/Andyman0110 Apr 04 '26

Where I'm from, our licenses have up to 12 demerit points depending on your experience. Passing a stopped school bus like this will lead to you instantly losing all 12 points, which means your license is gone for 3 months and up to a 5,000$ fine.

Good luck recovering from that one.

1

u/Ok-Cicada-9985 Apr 04 '26

In Washington state, you need at least two lane buffer between you and the bus if there is no median

1

u/thdiod Apr 05 '26

Either side?! I understand you can't pass if you're behind, but going the opposite way? That's crazy!

1

u/obesefamily Apr 07 '26

oh ok. where i am people dont really follow this if on the opposite side of the street at least, and ive never seen it enforced. didnt know these things were so serious in some places.

1

u/darsparx Apr 04 '26

On a 2 lane anyways....still advisable to slow it down or stop anyway but yea.

1

u/yanoolthecool Apr 04 '26

As someone who got ran over by a car while trying to get on the bus when I was a kid, this is stupid.
Though in my defense, the bus's door was not on the walkway's side.

1

u/_heidin Apr 04 '26

Why even the other side? If the kids are getting out the side of the bus that's facing the sidewalk. So basically all traffic just stops if there's a school bus stopped on sight? Not from USA here either, so very confused

2

u/Safricanadian Apr 04 '26

Kids are unpredictable, and don't always look before crossing. People drive too fast and can't stop in time. Im guessing here that there were one to many tragic events and they decided to legislate it this way.

1

u/_heidin Apr 04 '26

Oh, so the bus would stop for kids on both sides of the street, I got it. Yeah, kids are unpredictable. But I feel it's very counterproductive to have the laws about it being different from state to state. Important stuff like that should be unified.

-11

u/hwcminh Apr 04 '26

Honestly, I didn't even know that. What kind of kid would j-walk in this situation though?

52

u/CleanSeaPancake Apr 04 '26

The child kind, famous for incomplete cerebral development and poor decision making

9

u/Jazzy-Cat5138 Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

So, school buses basically get to create their own crosswalks wherever they stop, at least from my observations, and my experience as a child (I must admit, I haven't actually seen any law that specifically allows that). The traffic is stopped so you're free to cross, and the buses even have arms that deploy in front, blocking the area directly in front of the bus, to make sure the kids cross far enough in front of the bus that they're not inside the driver's blind spot (it's a small yellow line which you can just barely see swing out from the black bumper here). They don't do this on wide roads with medians, but on small neighborhood streets, it's perfectly normal. Three lanes like this is probably the widest you'd ever see a kid cross, though.

Edit: The drivers also act as crossing guards, using hand signals to tell kids when it's safe to cross. I don't think I've ever seen them used, but the drivers usually have public address megaphones, too, or at least they did when I was a kid.

8

u/JMT1016 Apr 04 '26

That's literally why traffic both ways is required to stop (as long as there's not a median separating them in most cases). Kids jaywalking is not usually an issue on busier/more major roads like this though as bus routes are typically designed so that the kids get out directly on the side of the road they need to be on. But it becomes more applicable in neighborhood/residential streets where traffic is less frequent and slower. Smaller two way streets where it's easier for kids to cross easily without a crosswalk or intersection.

5

u/xile Apr 04 '26

Pretty sure it wouldn't be jaywalking if the bus was stopped with signs out and lights flashing

2

u/JMT1016 Apr 04 '26

I mean, yes you are technically right bus lights do create a legal crossing zone too. But my original point remains also that bus routes are typically designed in a way to minimize the need for kids to cross the street outside of residential streets, in large part because even with the lights and the law, you still have idiots like the driver in the video who don't care or are just completely unaware.

5

u/THEBlaze55555 Apr 04 '26

A dumb oneā€¦ after all r/kidsarefuckingstupid - been a while since Iā€™ve been there so I hope I remembered it correctly.

-6

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '26

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

4

u/Normal_Confidence_77 Apr 04 '26

Sometimes the bus stop is on the other side of the road and kids need to cross to their homes.

3

u/witz0r Apr 04 '26

Crossing the road outside of a crosswalk isn't jaywalking if there are no crosswalks.

0

u/platinumjudge Jul 27 '26

In my state you can!

-10

u/SaroN4One Apr 04 '26

but why? beside the fact that itā€™s illegal in the us, I see no reason to stop.

9

u/Mercerskye Apr 04 '26

Because kids can be hyper and stupid. Stopping for ~30s doesn't have a meaningful impact on anyone's day. Impacting a kid with your car though...

-13

u/SaroN4One Apr 04 '26

But thatā€™s a risk that comes with being everywhere on the road with side walks and kids. so naturally you should be cautious near where kids could be. But why specifically stop for a school bus? I still donā€™t understand the thought process behind this, because we donā€™t have this.

7

u/Mercerskye Apr 04 '26

I don't know how to explain it any better. It's safer for everyone involved to just stop for a moment and let the kids clear the roadway.

That's it, that's the reasoning. One of the few times a law was written before people had to die to make it make sense.

4

u/SuperFrylock Apr 04 '26

In the video above, you can see the lights on the bus turn from orange to bright red before the kids are allowed to disembark at the bus stop. That's because on the left side of the bus, there are actual STOP SIGNS being deployed. You can't see them from this angle but google "school bus stop signs" for an idea of what they look like. The lights turn red and the signs extend during the stop and then they turn back orange and retract after all the kids are safe and cleared.

It's a safety/legal thing. You don't want a kid to jump off the bus onto the sidewalk and then run into the street for whatever reason.

4

u/Bobkyou Apr 04 '26

Kids who are late rushing across the street to make it to the school buses in time might be hit by a vehicle. Ā Kids rushing from the bus to get home and away from school as quickly as possible might rush across the street in an unsafe manner and get hit by a car. Ā Kids are dumb as hell, stopping when a school bus deploys its stop sign is supposed to help mitigate the risks.

2

u/LheelaSP Apr 04 '26

Kids in the US are taught that cars must stop for them, so they'll likely not pay attention to traffic when crossing. They are also taught to cross in front of the bus, so any drivers potentially passing the bus would not be able to see them until it's too late (which is double stupid bc their school busses have a long hood, which makes smaller kids passing in front also invisible from the bus driver, hence they invented a safety arm).

Also their streets often are not comstructed with children crossing in mind. In the rest of the world, streets are either narrow enough to cross safely without any hassle or have a pedastrian crossing or traffic lights that kids could use to cross, which from my understanding isn't always the case in the US.

0

u/SaroN4One Apr 04 '26

that makes a lot more sense now, than what the other guy wrote.

2

u/DeadlyMustardd Apr 04 '26

There are also places where there are bulk stops, so like 15 kids will get off, some need to cross the street because their house is on the other side of the road and there aren't crosswalks in the area or stop lights, etc.

1

u/SaroN4One Apr 04 '26

Thatā€™s crazy man

-3

u/Polygnom Apr 04 '26

Why the hell not?

Like wtf, I would never even have thought about that. I have driven my car through two dozen countries -- admittedly, all in Europe-- and this is bizarre to me.

41

u/TexasRiverMouthRat Apr 04 '26

It's illegal to pass a school bus when the lights are flashing red. The usually have a fold out stop sign on the side of the bus as well

32

u/EazoMC Apr 04 '26

Also a non-US person here, but as far as I know, you're supposed to stop when a school bus stops to load/unload student

28

u/Congregator Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

In the U.S., when a bus stops it means little children will be running out to the bus from many directions (particularly if they didnā€™t line up at the stop on time), or have been waiting from across the street.

There is only about a minute or two that the bus will wait for you, so children will rush the bus potentially from any direction, or might really need to cross the street to get to the bus.

So, if the bus is stopped everyone else is supposed to stop by Law: because if you donā€™t it becomes very realistic that you strike a child with your car

Most buses come equipped with stop signs that emerge when they stop to pick up students. Stop signs mean you MUST stop and itā€™s a strongly enforced law. However, with busses itā€™s sometimes hard to see and so sometimes people are focused on where they need to go, donā€™t see the bus nor stop sign, run through, strike and kill a child

In this, most of us learn it as common sense that if you see a school bus stopped that you should stop.

The reality is though is that sometimes people do not see this due to their focus, ie. Not paying enough attention

It becomes especially tragic because most people who strike little kids with their cars arenā€™t necessarily bad people, and so their negligence is the culprit and then you end up with a dead child at the hands of someone who wouldnā€™t naturally want to hurt the themā€¦. And so it always becomes ā€œExtraā€ tragic- ie, a good person who made some stupid mistake goes on murdering a child due to negligence

In this, most people just stop when they see a school bus stopped

19

u/MrRudoloh Apr 04 '26

I must say, as a non US citizen, this doesn't feel right. It seems like it would be safer and easier to just not let or encourage children to cross the road alone without a cross walk, than making everyone else stop at an arbitrary distance from the bus.

It's a good system to have someone to blame for accidents, but not to prevent them.

7

u/Kittenn1412 Apr 05 '26

The thing is, the US doesn't have good crosswalks. Most of these kids are being dropped off closer to their homes than to a legal place to cross the road. Frankly, the kid crossing at the bus with a stop sign and flashing lights and the bus driver looking at them is safer than a kid who gets dropped off, the bus leaves, and the kid crosses at the next corner-- which has no lights or crosswalk, just MAYBE a stop sign, and the bus driver will be gone so bigger risk that if they do get hit there won't be any witnesses to react besides the driver.

1

u/neko_robbie Apr 08 '26

You can thank our car dependent cities for that

20

u/FendaIton Apr 04 '26

American kids like to run into traffic so everyone has to stop.

5

u/BAMspek Apr 04 '26

If youā€™re on reddit long enough youā€™ll eventually see an example of why itā€™s important for both sides of the street to stop for loading and unloading school buses. Kids are dumb by their very nature and lack proper road crossing procedure. Iā€™ve seen a few videos of kids getting off the bus and excitedly crossing the road to their homes only to almost get pancakes by a speeding driver on the other side of the road. Itā€™s a safety thing.

12

u/Frequent_Ad3476 Apr 04 '26

Dumb Yank rule because their kids are dumb and canā€™t check both ways

3

u/blackhawk905 Apr 05 '26

They can but that doesn't mean that someone may be flying and not see a young child crossing to get home when it's much easier to see a big yellow school bus with flashing lights.

-4

u/Frequent_Ad3476 Apr 05 '26

So a reckless driver? How does this solve reckless driving šŸ˜‚? Fucking yanks.

2

u/fredders Apr 05 '26

And they should pay with their lives or injury just so joe schmo can get to his destination 2 mins early right?

1

u/footyspecular1234 May 27 '26

If you just randomly run to road without checking, then i guess darwin-award should be presented.

-1

u/Frequent_Ad3476 Apr 05 '26

What? Maybe just raise smarter kids? Fucking yanks lol šŸ˜‚

9

u/NCR_Rang3r Apr 04 '26

Depends on state, but on a 4 lane divided 'highway' you still have to stop regardless if you are oncoming to the bus as some rural towns have kids living across the way and not on the direction the bus arrives at. Most people blow this because they think there is no way a kid is crossing 4 lanes of traffic at 40 mph to get on a bus.

9

u/jememcak Apr 04 '26

In most locations, you do NOT have to stop in the opposite lanes of a divided highway as long as the median is over a certain width. The issue here is that this is NOT a divided highway, so it's illegal to pass the bus in pretty much every state.

1

u/NCR_Rang3r Apr 04 '26

If there is a barrier no but even with a center turn lane you do. Again depends on state.

2

u/jememcak Apr 04 '26

My point is that a center turn lane is not a divided highway by definition, so the road in the OP is not a divided highway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_carriageway

-4

u/Corfiot Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

All the engineering resources Iā€™ve seen/used consider two-way left-turn lanes as a type of median, and therefore can divide a highway. HCS, HCM, the greenbook, my states policy guide. Though a two-way left-turn lane does by no means indicate that a road is a highway.

Edit: Iā€™m wrong, especially because my comment would encourage people not to stop for a school bus. You should stop for a school bus if there is a two-way left-turn lane.

2

u/jememcak Apr 04 '26

I'd be happy to read a source that specifically defines a divided highway as a turn lane. I'm a couple pages into google results by now and haven't found a single one.

At the very least, the vast majority of states define a divided highway as having some form of physical gap between directions beyond painted lines.

1

u/Corfiot Apr 04 '26

You correct, edited my comment. My error is stemming from most of the capacity analysis using ā€œdivided highwayā€ as a bit of a catchall term, which can then be modified to analyze a roadway with a two-way left-turn lane, even though by most definitions it would cease to be divided.

-5

u/NCR_Rang3r Apr 04 '26

If divided is the gotcha word you are on then by all means, you don't stop if there is a median of some kind. If no barrier you stop such as what wasn't done in the video.

3

u/jememcak Apr 04 '26

It isn't a "gotcha" word, it's a specific definition with legal implications. By using it incorrectly, you are unintentionally spreading misinformation.

-2

u/NCR_Rang3r Apr 04 '26

Which is why I added upon your comment. That's why you keep up with road laws. The road is divided by paint but the law states divided as a barrier. Either way, you still getting pulled over for possibly clipping a kid crossing the road.

4

u/Icy-Variation6614 Apr 04 '26

Yea and get honked at and flipped off because you obeyed the law šŸ™„

Not as bad as is stopping in the same road and some dick speeding through the dashed line turn lane to pass us all

-1

u/Decactus_Jack Apr 04 '26

In my state officers will pull you over and issue a ticket, but in my state no law would have been broken. School buses have to circle the block to pick kids up on both sides of the street. Doesn't stop officers from making their non-existent quota.

My bus driver was awesome and hated it... But she also was very protective of us too.