School bus
A school bus is a bus used to transport children and adolescents to and from school. The first school bus was horse-drawn; introduced in 1827 by George Shillibeer for a Quaker school in Stoke Newington, London, and designed to carry twenty-five children. Since then they have become widespread, and motorised, in all parts of the world.
Related Topics:
Bus - Children - Adolescents - School - George Shillibeer - Stoke Newington - London
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Some countries have specially built, painted and equipped school buses. In Canada and the United States they are commonly painted an orangey-yellow color (officially known as "National School Bus Glossy Yellow") for purposes of visibility and safety and equipped with specialized traffic warning devices. Most used in recent years have been diesel-powered. Full-size school buses can seat forty-five to seventy passengers or even more, but in many districts smaller vehicles are used as well. Some U.S. school districts purchase the buses and hire their own drivers, while others engage the service of school bus contractors such as Laidlaw to perform this function. School buses in the UK in almost all cases are contracted out to local bus companies. Elsewhere in Europe school buses are hardly known.
Related Topics:
Canada - United States - Orangey - Yellow - National School Bus Glossy Yellow - Diesel - School district - School bus contractor - Laidlaw - UK - Europe
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~ Table of Content ~
| ► | Introduction |
| ► | School buses in the U.S. |
| ► | Retired school buses |
| ► | School Bus Manufacturers |
| ► | Models |
| ► | See Also |
| ► | External links |
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Latest news on school bus
School bus crash kills motorist
The 79-year-old driver of a car dies after a crash involving a school bus in the Scottish Borders.
Six-year-old takes parents' car after missing school bus
The parents of a six-year-old boy in the US are charged with neglect after the boy drove their car for 10km trying to get to school on time.
Plug In That School Bus
There are 450,000 school buses in America, and they're all as eco-friendly as a Hummer full of clubbed baby seals. Plug-in hybrid busesoffer huge reductionsin emissions and fuel consumption, but they're budget-busters at $170,000 or more apiece. Still, ditching fuel-sucking, carbon-spewing vehicles like buses makes a lot of sense because the reduced operating costs offer a quick return on investment and the environmental impacts are significant. Many bus manufacturers are developing greener alternatives- and doing so faster than some automakers - but they're replacing old technology with new. An Illinois startup has a different idea - updating the old technology to make it cleaner. Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies is developing a plug-and-play conversion kit that'll make any school bus a plug-in hybrid for about $80,000. The company already sells kits that convert any Ford F-150 pickup into a 41-mpg plug-in hybrid, and founder Ali Emadi says the next step is adapting it to work on buses. "Our laboratory simulations show that the larger the vehicle converted to hybrid technology, the greater the benefits ? in gas costs, greenhouse emissions, and sound pollution," he says. The company is working with the Illinois Institute of Technology and the plug-in evangelists at CarCalsand says it hopes to forge partnerships with bus manufacturers in 2009. Emadi says the bus will use a beefed-up version of the F-150 system. The plan calls for a 35kWh battery pack capable of going 15 miles on a four hour charge. Charging the battery when the bus is idle at night and during the day will give it enough juice to boost fuel economy from around 6 mpg to about 16 and slash CO2 emissions by nine tons a year, he says. Eighty grand is still a lot of money, but Emadi says costs will come down as the technology improves. The company also hopes to supply the technology to vehicle manufacturers, which would further bring down costs by allowing for economies of scale. POST UPDATED 11:30 a.m. PST. Photo by Flickr user JohnnyBlough.
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