Have a Question?

If you have a question you can search for the answer below!

Why are School Buses Yellow

School buses are a type of buses that are designed and used to transport school aged children to and from school and school events. In the United States they are usually bright yellow in color and have specific safety features that are required by federal law. The first school bus was a horse-drawn carriage that was used to transport girls to Newington Academy for Girls, a Quaker school in Stoke Newington. This service 1827 and was designed to carry 25 children. Today, there are over 480,000 school buses throughout the U.S that carry over 26 million children to school each day.

Why are school buses yellow?
The color, now known as school bus yellow, was made the official color of school buses in 1939. A school bus conference was organized by Dr. Frank W. Cyr, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Representatives from the transport section of 48 states attended. At this conference standards were set dictating how school buses should be manufactured and painted. Not only did they decide that school buses should be yellow, but they also determined the length, ceiling height and aisle width of school buses.

There were a number of reasons why yellow was chosen as the color for school buses. The most important factor was the high visibility of yellow vehicles. School buses often operate at times where the light is low such as early morning and evening. Scientists have shown that yellow is more visible to the human eye under low light conditions. Yellow was also chosen for school buses due to its ability to capture the attention of a driver. This is important because young children and teenagers are statistically less likely to be paying attention to vehicles on the road after they disembark the school bus. Science has proven that the peripheral vision is more likely to notice the color yellow. Research has shown that lateral peripheral vision for detecting yellows is 1.24 times greater than for red. Another factor behind choosing yellow was that the black lettering on the bus is easier to see and read on a yellow background more than any other color. This also helps people to easily identify a school bus.

Related Articles

Why Don’t Buses Have Seat Belts

When was School Invented

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You can use these HTML tags and attributes <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>