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Comment by kristianp | Hacker News Reader

I'm wondering about the school bus story here, as a non-USA person. Does the school bus display flashing warning lights to indicate that a child is crossing in front of the bus while it is stationary? Seems like a dangerous situation (that the driver should have slowed for). Is crossing in front of the bus really safer than making the child cross after the bus has departed?

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Typically the bus has a stop sign with flashing lights that automatically swings out when the bus driver opens the doors. The law in most places in North America is that it is illegal to pass the school bus when students are embarking or disembarking, so in practice it is safer for the students to cross the street while the school bus is there.

Image of a typical North American school bus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_bus_traffic_stop_laws...

Where I am, when school busses make a stop to pickup/dropoff kids it does a lot of signaling. Big red lights at the top blink, a stop sign with lights flips out from the side. It is against the law to pass a school bus when it's lights are on in this configuration from either direction. I've heard of districts equipping cameras on busses where there are incidents of illegal passing like this.

Also, back in the day there was a little barrier that would flip out hinged on the passenger side that would attempt to prevent kids from walking out in front of the bus, at least so close that the bus driver couldn't reasonably see. I don't know if those are still common or not.

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