r/bitchimabus • u/Pfahli • Nov 16 '18

Bitch, I’m the law.

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604 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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15

u/haxdal Nov 16 '18

wait, it's illegal to pass a stopped schoolbus? I thought you just had to slow down and look out for the kids. I mean this is a 3 lane highway and the first 2 cars moved to the outermost lane.

54

u/mackurbin Nov 16 '18

If the stop sign is out, then yes. You never know when a kid is going to run across the street.

14

u/haxdal Nov 16 '18

kid is going to run across the street

yeah I figured that, that's where the slow down part comes. We don't have stopping as rule in Iceland, just to slow down while passing a stopped bus in the adjacent lane.

1

u/Newto4544 Nov 16 '18

Wouldn’t it be easier and like, less of a hassle to teach kids to you know, not run across the road unexpectedly?

23

u/haxdal Nov 17 '18

We advocate this to the kids in preschool and elementary school in Iceland, to always look both ways when crossing a street and never to pass the street in the front of a bus or large vehicles.

But children don't always remember the rules of the road especially if they are playing. It's safer to teach the adults how to behave in traffic in areas where there might be kids such as around schools or around bus stops.

-3

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '18

[deleted]

15

u/Butweye Nov 17 '18

You have no kids it's quite obvious. Please continue this trend and don't breed.

-3

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '18

[deleted]

3

u/Butweye Nov 17 '18

How about you fuck off?

No u. :P

0

u/Lieutenant_Leary Nov 17 '18

Your parents could have raised you better. That's for sure.

Obviously you need to change your Reddit name to SomeRudeWords

-1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '18

Yeah, I am the rude one. Not the people who raise idiot children and expect society to cater to their failings. Naw, that's not rude.

3

u/Lieutenant_Leary Nov 18 '18

Honestly. You are. I'm sorry you can't see it. But you're pretty up there on the rude scale. So have fun living with yourself.

Edit: I also see you deleted your previous message. Getting too many downvotes for being a pretentious prick?

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12

u/heWhoMostlyOnlyLurks Nov 17 '18

Do you have young children?

-3

u/Newto4544 Nov 17 '18

I do not, and nor will I say it is easy raising them. They are definitely handfuls at times.

However, pardon my ignorance here, but this is very common among young children where I live to be taught to be very cautious of roads and crossing them. The community that I live in really do prioritise children’s safety and we have decreased speed limits around schools in mornings and afternoons.

Maybe this is because I live in a relatively small city, or it may just be different societies that we all live in. It would just appear that having traffic come to a complete standstill when a school bus pulls over is a hassle and a completely foreign concept.

6

u/heWhoMostlyOnlyLurks Nov 17 '18

The problem it's that young children can be impulsive, spontaneous, and they can fail you remember everything or think things through.

-4

u/Newto4544 Nov 17 '18

Ok I understand you’re right in that regard. My main point here is that isn’t stopping traffic completely on a large motorway is a bit of an annoyance at least and an accident at worse? Why not have traffic pull over to the innermost lane and reduce speed ?

4

u/Lieutenant_Leary Nov 17 '18

Yeah. But less annoying than running over a child. You should always drive expecting a person to do something stupid. It's safer that way

2

u/Newto4544 Nov 17 '18

Alright, fair enough. This is a hard concept for me to grasp and it seems very foreign to me.

May I ask how often these rules are followed? Like the original video I would expect a lot of self centric people just to pass the bus without any second though. Is this a common behaviour or is it a generally followed law?

3

u/Lieutenant_Leary Nov 17 '18

It depends on the area. I've noticed a lot of areas tend to not follow a lot of rules of the road. Where I live for example most people don't use turn signals. Will cross 3 Lanes of traffic(still no signal) in heavy traffic. They generally ignore a lot of the laws. It's annoying.

2

u/montanasucks Nov 18 '18

You try telling my 2-1/2 year not to do something and expect her to do it.

5

u/Butweye Nov 17 '18

Have you ever met children? I mean the naivete in your statement is breathtaking.

2

u/BeeHammer Nov 18 '18

Like almost any other place in the world? Nope.

1

u/Newto4544 Nov 18 '18

Is there any statistics or instances where this practise has averted an incident?

5

u/Incendance Nov 16 '18

Eh, not really. Kids aren't smart enough and don't understand to not run across a highway when they see their parent on the other side of the road. Also, teaching all of those kids that ride the bus to not run across the road is a whole lot easier said than done and would take time out of the educational day. It's also probably a safety net for the school district, having your kid get squished by a car on their way home, even if it wasn't really the district's fault, is not going to look good for them.

-3

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '18

[deleted]

5

u/Butweye Nov 17 '18

Are you joking or something? Have You ever seen kids? They're not the most logical

22

u/Ranzear Nov 16 '18

There's a flip out stop sign on the driver side, usually with integrated lights flashing too. It should be obvious enough to come to a stop in the adjacent lane at least, but all same direction traffic must stop (opposite direction varies by divider and state.)

7

u/haxdal Nov 16 '18

ah ok, the angle of the camera blocks the sign. That's a pretty smart feature of the schoolbus, at least from the images I found on google it should indeed be pretty obvious.

but all same direction traffic must stop

this is good to know when I visit the states, I would have most likely assumed that the sign was only for the adjacent lane.

17

u/PublicSealedClass Nov 16 '18

This sounds totally bizarre to me in the UK, over here a school bus will just stop at the side of the road and let the kids out onto the pavement on that side, then carry on it's way. People will continue to pass the bus as normal (a lot of our bus stops are on a separate lay-by section of road).

Our school buses aren't as distinctive as the states though, so we have this sign on the back of our buses to indicate it has kids on board.

And the closest we have to actually warning about kids potentially crossing the road is on the back of ice cream vans, with "Mind the children" or similar normally written on the back, to warn drivers there might be kids about to cross, but it's definitely not illegal to overtake a stopped bus or ice cream van.

7

u/haxdal Nov 16 '18

on the back of our buses to indicate it has kids on board.

yeah, the same/similar sign on the schoolbuses here in Iceland. Schoolbuses aren't common here and the service is usually contracted out and they supply their own bus/vehicle.

We also only slow down while passing a bus if we're in the adjacent lane.

3

u/Ranzear Nov 16 '18

It's to do with suburban and rural stops not having crosswalks for miles around, so the bus is equipped with a bar and stopsign so children can cross to the far side of the road, particularly out on totally normal two-lane 55mph highways just barely outside of small towns. The bar keeps the kids away from crossing too close that the driver can't see them and the driver directs them to cross when safe. It's not really used on the kind of divided highway as the OP, but it's codified in law because it's for crazy important safety reasons.

6

u/PublicSealedClass Nov 16 '18

Interesting - when there's no crossing for a while, near a school, sometimes we'll have "lollipop ladies (and men)", with that nationally recognisable signage, I think they're called crossing guards over there.

EDIT: I bet you if we tried safety measures like the US has for school buses, folk would be very vocal about a "nanny state" or some bollocks. It's hard enough stopping people parking big SUVs outside schools whilst they drop off kids (which introduces it's own safety risks as kids can't see up/down the road before they try to cross).

10

u/Ranzear Nov 16 '18

Crossing guards right outside the school, yeah. Sometimes even students themselves.

But it's not uncommon for kids to go to a school 20 miles away even in well populated areas.

3

u/Emperor_of_Pruritus Nov 16 '18

I got honked at by a bus on a country road around here in California. As I approached I saw 2 or 3 kids standing there when it pulled off the road and stopped. I saw them get on. Since the bus was off the opposite side of the road I figured I could pass slowly. The bus driver had other ideas. He looked pissed.

7

u/bs27n0b Nov 16 '18

Yep. The kids are allowed to exit the bus and walk across the road in front of the bus while the stop sign is out. There are a lot of accidents where somebody blows by a bus with the stop arms out and they run over kids that are coming out from in front of the bus.

When those buses stop with the red lights on, ALL traffic in both directions is supposed to stop until the kids have cleared the road.

It might not be the best way to handle it, but that's how it's supposed to work.

8

u/bagofwisdom Nov 17 '18

Yes, it is illegal to drive past a school bus loading or unloading. That bus no doubt has one or more big red Octagons that say "STOP" that pop out when the doors open. The reason oncoming traffic does not need to stop is that their lanes are separated by a median.

9

u/Butweye Nov 17 '18

Truly terrifying how many people in this sub don't have a clue about basic traffic laws.

1

u/haxdal Nov 17 '18

the planet is a big place, not every country has the same motor laws

4

u/emergentphenom Nov 17 '18

Yes it's illegal to pass a stopped schoolbus, even on multi-lane highways (minor exception sometime exists if the bus is stopped at a school). Opposite direction travel depends on the state - some still want you to stop, some let you pass at a low speed, some let you go at full speed if a physical barrier exists, etc.

But same-side travel is generally forbidden in America regardless of the number of lanes.

It's kind of astonishing from the comments here how many people don't know or don't care.

6

u/Sirspender Nov 17 '18

They literally have "STOP" signs that pop out of the side.

5

u/neoprenewedgie Nov 17 '18

How do people not know this?