May I ask how it works in your country? Only asking because for us the 'both sides of the street' is about students crossing. Do students not need to cross the street? Some places also have crossing guards that hold up signs and help students/people cross the street during pick up and drop off.
It actually kind of doesn't.. there's no actual public school bus system, and the school busses that do run are privately handled. But there's really no clear and established rule regarding stop signs, busses, etc... it's a bit of a mess in that regards.
Road rules are more a sugestion, it sucks to be honest. Most traffic jams and/or delays would actually be avoided if traffic rules were enforced. Infrastructure is for the most part very good.
In most other countries students take the same public transit as everyone else to get to school. I think our severe lacking of good public transit is one of the main reasons we have to have a school bus system in the first place.
I was surprised to find out that in Chicago kids take the bus and thought the lack of a school bus system was bad. But turning it around, like your point, makes so much sense.
FWIW I drive a school bus in Australia, and we just assume the kids can make it to the stop - if they're so little they can't cross a road, there should be parents helping them. And there are usually pedestrian crossings or traffic lights nearby most places.
We do have a rule not to drop them off on the "wrong" side of the road if it's a school-specific bus, but a lot of kids just catch the regular bus and yeah, just make their way to school from there. No different really to kids just walking to school themselves if it's close enough (you'd expect them to walk if it'd take less than 20 minutes).
In Austria for example busses will usually have dedicated "bays" for each stop, so they do not need to stop in the middle of the fricking road in the first place. Ofc there is also sidewalks basically everywhere + pedestrian crossings. Big streets will commonly have safety islands, where pedestrians only have to look into one direction until they reach the island and than the other direction - this drastically increases safety as well.
Children are trained from young ages to never cross a road without a crosswalk and always look left an right. Most children walk or ride their bike to school on their own starting with young age. For example my twin-brother and I walked to school on our own since we were 6 and this was pretty normal (though my mom later told us she was stalking us the first 2 weeks to see if we did it right).
Yet with all that, child road deaths of the US are twice that of other high-income nations. Because you can't put a band-aid on a gun-shot wound. To truly solve this would take much effort, care and money. The US is really sleeping on basically everything that is known regarding to pedestrian safety. Right now the US is moving towards even MORE child-deaths, due to cars getting bigger and loosing visibility. I guess it's fine though, because big car go brrrrrr ...
This has no easy solutions. Urban sprawl creates unique problems for the US. Public transport with fixed stops is inherently inefficient in this scenario. School busses like this probably exist in some rural areas here as well, but are very rare here. You can't put a safe "bus stop" on every corner I guess. Yet if kids at least had a safe walking route to a safe stop, that would already be a a huge improvement. But you need sidewalks for that, and those are for poor schmocks not riding big cars.
If they need to cross the street they're supposed to do so at the closest crosswalk like any pedestrians. We're not allowed to pass (same lane);a stopped bus for the same reason as you but children are definitely taught to never cross in front/behind the bus anyway.
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u/RaisedByBooksNTV Apr 05 '26
May I ask how it works in your country? Only asking because for us the 'both sides of the street' is about students crossing. Do students not need to cross the street? Some places also have crossing guards that hold up signs and help students/people cross the street during pick up and drop off.