Comment by tialaramex | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tialaramex | Hacker News Reader

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Legally the pedestrian has no responsibility except that they're prohibited from entering certain areas specifically legislatively set aside for motor vehicles like motorways (approximately "freeways").

Drivers are required to give "due care and attention" to driving which can be demonstrated by following the "highway code" and that code tells them pedestrians might do things they don't expect and to assume if it's not clear what's going to happen then yeah there is a pedestrian behind that obstruction and they are going to run into the road in front of you, whereupon hitting them would be your fault.

For example when I was a child I got off my first bus home from secondary school, and ran straight into the road in front of a car I couldn't see because the bus was in the way. The horrified driver was legally responsible for that, even though she hasn't intended to hit me. I believe she would have been automatically billed by the authorities for the cost of shipping me to a hospital to have my broken leg set and so on.

Clearly it is in some sense my fault that happened, but on the other hand it's not me choosing to drive a huge steel box at 30mph past a bunch of idiot children...

Driving without due care and attention is also an offense in the United States and Canada, and should apply in almost all cases where a pedestrian is hit, but usually isn't.

Why didn't your school bus have a stop sign deployed? Those are for exactly this risk. Running a school bus stop sign I believe is a more significant violation than running post-stop signs.

Unfortunately they don’t exist in a lot of countries.

Do they exist in any country other than the USA?

Plenty:

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

Soon Asia none of those are public school buses, especially China where they are all private buses painted yellow and have no special treatment (no stop sign popping out of the side). Similar differences exist in Europe. Or I guess my point is, none of these systems come even close to resembling what we ache in the USA and Canada.

What school bus? Did I say school bus?

It was simply a bus. Specifically it was the hourly bus from the nearest large town (where my new school was) to the village I grew up in.

In London, children take the same double decker buses everyone else takes. There’s no “school bus” like they do in the US. This is also true for Germany and the Netherlands where I’ve lived as well.

12mph is the speed limit around a stopped school bus here in New Zealand.

In Texas, you cannot even go around a stopped school bus. Very expensive ticket ($400!)

I presume that's the case in every U.S. state. Part of the bus stop protocol I got taught is that kids cross the street in front of the bus after they get out, and that we needed to walk forward far enough that the driver could see us.

My school bus had this pole attached to the front bumper area of the bus. It swung out when it stops. This forces kids to walk at least 8 feet (or however wide a bus us) in front of it before crossing.

Yep, they appeared in my school district in the mid-90's. And with it came stop signs that swung out from the side of the bus, overhead escape hatches that could be opened for ventilation, and ejection seats.

Ejection seats?!!

In Minnesota, the school buses have stop signs that swing out with lights on them when the bus is boarding or letting off children. It is illegal to go around the bus when the sign is displayed. I hope I never find out how much the ticket is.

Yup, we have those in Texas too. I assumed they were standard; I guess TIL I learned they're not. They very much should be. Children, especially very young children, are quite unpredictable even when they should know better, and the signs are a signal from the bus driver to surrounding cars that the safety of those children (which the driver should be monitoring) is much, much more important than the impatience of the surrounding motorists. You always stop. Always.

Yep, same in WA. In fact, every school bus deploys bright red flashing lights and displays giant stop signals unfolding from the back, with signs that say in very uncertain terms that it is illegal to pass a school bus when it is stopped and the lights are deployed.

Ridiculous those big road hogs get to sit there impeding traffic for literally no reason. Just adjust the route so the kid only gets out on the side facing the house so the rest of us don't have to suffer. Pay taxes for the road then have to sit there not even able to properly use it, ludicrous.

I'm glad you weren't hurt worse; an unfortunate college student at my university tried the same thing with a public transit bus stopped to let her off at a green light, and she did not survive.

The car passing the bus had no chance of seeing her, and there was no reason to believe anyone would be crossing against the green light. I think she may have had a pattern-match malfunction and acted as if she'd just disembarked a school bus. It was a tragedy all around.

Just to be clear, the laws on crossing the street as a pedestrian differ by district.

You didn't get taught by parents/teachers that you should be crossing behind the bus, not in front of it?

I'm not saying it was your fault, it just never ceases to amaze me how car-centric the US is (that's after over a decade of living here)

I was crossing behind the bus. That's why she couldn't see me. Also, this sub-thread is about the UK, and so unsurprisingly my anecdote is also about the UK.

back by the massive diesel exhaust pipe? no thanks. you’re really setting kids up to be healthy! the front the driver can see if the child is far enough away (hence the pole) and it keeps the kid in sight for any other stopped cars next to the bus. Also I hold you understand running around saying things like “it just never ceases to amaze me how car-centric the US is” is offensive and micro aggressive. we have what we have, and that’s a lot of room.

That only works on a one-way street, not a small two-lane street like where I grew up. It's not as general advice as you think.

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