Why are school buses yellow? I’m stuck behind these buses everyday – and since the buses are so slow, I definitely have the time to think about that question – but I’ve never known the answer. On the surface there doesn’t seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason behind the color, but actually there’s more to this than meets the eye with that simple shade of yellow.
Even though four to six children die each year in school bus accidents, that statistic is low according to the National Highway Safety Regulation. School bus fatalities account for less than one percent of highway deaths which is much lower than driving in a normal car. We may think these giant tin transporters on wheels are unsafe, but they were actually constructed with safety in mind.
Frank Cyr was the face of the school bus reform, and for thirty years Cyr lived and worked in rural Nebraska school districts and understood the need for consistency and reform in transportation. What constituted a school bus was quite varied in America, there were even horse drawn wagons used well up into the 20th-century. With the backing of the Rockefellers and the General School Board, Cyr conducted a study in ten states examining the various ways children were transported to school. By the time Cyr went to a conference at Columbia University to discuss federal school bus reform in 1939, he pressed and advocated for safety.
Alongside bus manufacturers, Cyr and a small committee of experts decided that alongside height, entry width, and capacity, color was a pinnacle factor for safety. Sifting through color swatches, the committee finally settled on an orange-yellow hue that was initially called National School Bus Chrome (named after the chrome lead in the paint). The color is now called National School Bus Glossy Yellow or Color 13432.
Though there is no regulation or mandate to paint school buses yellow (and localities can legally establish their own rules to identify school buses), most places adopt the voluntary guidelines rather than going to the drawing board and making regulations from scratch. The national trend was established ultimately by guideline number seventeen which states that all buses have to be painted National School Bus Glossy Yellow. Decades after that 1939 conference, science backed up the logic behind yellow school buses stating that lateral peripheral vision sees yellow more easily than any other color, making yellow a good choice for standing out and being seen.