A classic 16mm reel that hits close to home for me. True story: in the winter of 1972 I survived a terrible school bus accident. It was in one of these very buses shown in the film, where every kid in every seat faced a solid steel bar that ran across the back of the seat in front of them, and of course no seat belts or anything like that. Well, one afternoon the school got dismissed early due to a blizzard, and on the ride home the bus collided head on with a PA State snowplow, which was basically a Mac dump truck loaded with salt with a 6' high steel plow mounted on the front, and through the collision the bus went airborne, rolled over, and landed on its side down an embankment in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the blizzard. Exiting the bus were stunned kids with missing rows of teeth, broken noses, busted arms, and all the like. As with every other crash I have been in (always as a passenger) I was completely unharmed due to my lightning fast natural reflexes, but the fact remains - those buses were never safe. They depended on the fallacy that no one would ever dare hit a school bus, and that no school bus would ever crash into anything. Well, they did. A lot. And that's what happened to me! Enjoy!!!
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#School #70's #film
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#School #70's #film
- Intro Music by Fran Blanche -
Fran's Science Blog - http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html
FranArt Website - http://www.contourcorsets.com
This film was shown in 1989 and it was from 1973. I remember watching old films from the 60s, and 70s in the classroom in the mid 1980s. I think this one in particular serves its purpose to be shown to students in 2022
Being on the first stop in the route, one of us would sit on the heater next to the driver (this is mid 60's). Vacuum wipers that stopped when the driver tried to accelerate, maybe that's why the things had vacuum gauges in them, along with speedometers mounted upside down.
1970, the year I started first grade. I hated those buses, Blue Birds they were, and hot as an oven here in South Texas. No air conditioning and the bus lady made us keep the windows closed for fear we'd get our heads stuck. By the time we got to our destination all us kids would be dripping in sweat and so close to heat exhaustion we moved like zombies.
I can tell you that most of the kids who watched this film learned nothing from it. I know because they're all grown now, and I can see how they act on planes! ("Do you stay in your seat until the bus is completely stopped? Do you wait your turn? What happens when you crowd?") They're already jamming the aisles before the "Please stay in your seat until…" announcement is even finished! Don't get me started!
I was among the last generation of kids to grow up riding in school buses with a manual transmission, gasoline engine, no A/C, and no seatbelts except for the driver. By the time I graduated high school, they were nearly all gone. Although I believe even today you can still order a school bus based on an International chassis with a manual gearbox, since it's the same chassis they use for box trucks. I wonder if the bus shown in the video had power steering — with its giant steering wheel and very high number of rotations needed to make a turn, it may have been unassisted.
Believe it or not my district's new school buses (from the 2010s) don't even have student seat belts. A neighboring district does, though. I find this odd because this is in Massachusetts where you are required to wear seat belts in cars and get ticketed if you don't.
I attended kindergarten and first grade at the school in this film, Olympic Elementary, starting in 1983. (now known as Edmonds Elementary) I remember the school bus driver hauling ass up the hill and around the cornersto get to the school in the morning.
A safe ride on your school bus also includes the driver turning on the flashing lights when stopping to pick up or let out children. This driver put the stop flag out but failed to turn on the flashing lights.
Great reel, certainly brought back the memories of the late 60's and early 70's. One of the all steel buses I was in had a shovel and a huge axe next to the enormous box of road flares stowed up front for quick access. The women driver could work the gears and clutch like a master, even in the worst snow. She was the law on that bus, and had a huge smile every day! Things were a lot different then, Pennsylvania was different also. Thanks for the history 🙂
The fact they were still rolling this film nearly 20 years after it was made is kind of surprising.
I work on school buses now myself, and the safety measures in them now is a heck of a lot different. Part of my job is to definitely try to get these kids buckled up with a three-point harness, and when they get resistant about the seatbelts, I point out that if we got into an accident, without the belt, the first thing that'd happen is their head would smash into the back of the seat in front of them. It might have more padding now but there's still definitely metal bars underneath that faux leather.
(Also, as an aside: The occasional skipping/flicking frames make me feel like there's a possibility for some analog horror-type stuff out of someone pretending to create an "old" film like this with modern techniques.)
Good video.
That nasty asbestos giant brake shoe drum drone sound!
Who can forget that?
I noticed the buses were GMC's that were older and had strong rear leaf springs that didn't sag. IH seemed to take over after that era.
A bus driver was broke down on the highway once and I walked down to the bus and could see a large exhaust pipe that was dragging on the road, so I told her to sit tight while I ran back to the house and got a wire clothes hanger, crawled under the bus and wired it up for her, so she could get back to town.
At Christmas time, she came by and game me a coffee mug full of coco packs and Herseys kisses. Nice lady bus driver.
One winter, I was driving behing a high school girl driving too fast on ice in a little Ford Probe and a school bus stopped on a highway at farm and the girl in the Probe following the bus panicked and locked her brakes up and slid right under the rear of the bus and was stuck up to it's windshield and she was balling her head off. No bus damage.
They had to wait for another bus to come and transfer the children to it while the highway patrol performed an investigation. Wintertime was pure hell!
I imagine that almost everyone has wild bus riding stories!
Wow Fran, what an experience you had! At one point in the 70's, we had a bus driver that would "gas it" while going over well known bumps and the kids would prepare ahead of time by getting in the very back seats. This would cause them to be launched a few seats forward! Of course S.E. Penn area….
Bus was always full by the time for our pickup stops, in the Ontario countyside, so we had to stand in the aisle with one hand on a seat top rail, and book bags under the other arm and lunch box with the other hand. For some reason backpacks were probably around, (1960's), but were either not popular or fashionable at the time, or not marketed like they are nowadays. The roads and concessions were long, bumpy and hilly, with twists ands turns up and down and around. It was quite a workout for my legs just to keep my balance for the long rides and we were tired and exhausted by the time we arrived at school…good times.
The copyright on the movie is 1970. I was in elementary school on the first half of the '70s and I sort of saw the evolution of the school bus into its more modern form. There were NO "stop" flags when I started elementary school. They were there by the time I left and they, rather quickly, as I recall, got their lights…the flags, at first didn't have the lights to catch your attention. The bus in this movie has the flag but it is in rectangular form and no lights on the flag.
The busses had the red alternating lights at the top, however and I'm sure those were an early add to the school bus.
Later, the sweep bar in the front was added…the one that forces kids that are going to cross in front of the buss to walk at least a bus' width in front so the driver can see them. 3-4 foot tall kids are invisible to the driver when trying to look over the engine. The "Cab Over" designs put the driver in a better view of what little person may be in front of them.
I'm pretty sure that the yellow alternating lights (we're about to stop) came after I had left elementary school. I don't recall when those were added around here but they were definitely a smart move (as have the other improved safety features of the school bus).
My mother is from Canada and moved to Denmark with my father when they got married. My father once visited some of her relatives who live in the US and one day, they were driving behind a school bus. My father did notice it and attempted to drive by slowly when it stopped but was told very sternly to stop completely by the other people in the car! 😀 We don't do that in Denmark. There we expect the children to wait until the bus has left the stop. That makes much more sense.