Every year over 26 million children ride to and from school in 480,000 school buses in the USA. While there may be different styles and size, they all have one obvious thing in common. They are all the same shade of yellow. How did yellow come to be the quintessential color for a school bus?
Frank Cyr was a professor at the Teachers College at Columbia University. Having grown up in rural Nebraska, he had a heart for improving rural education. Cyr saw transportation as part of the path to improvement. He conducted a multi-state study in 1937 of school transportation in which he discovered each state or local school system had their own set of standards.
Cyr believed national standards could improve safety and make school transportation more affordable by allowing manufacturers to mass produce buses to one set of standards. So in 1939, Cyr invited school transportation officials and bus manufacturers from every state to a conference in New York City with the task to create the first national set of standards for school buses.
One of the 44 standards to come out of the conference was the color of school buses. Cyr wanted a color that was easy to see and identify as a school bus transporting children. A committee at the conference chose the now iconic yellow from among 50 paint swatches. The color was originally known as “National School Bus Chrome” and was made from a lead-based paint containing chromium. Both lead-based paint and chromium are toxic and no longer used in school bus paint. Today the color is called “National School Bus Glossy Yellow.”
Frank Cyr and his committee at the conference may have intuitively picked a scientifically sound color for the buses. Yellows are the colors most easily seen by humans. The eye has three types of cones to detect different wavelengths of light. Yellow stimulates both the red and green cones making it easy for us to spot the big yellow school bus, even in our peripheral vision. The improved visibility contributes to improved safety.
Over the past 80 years, the idea of the yellow school bus has become a deeply ingrained part of our culture. As technology has improved, the safety standards for school buses have changed. What has not changed, however, is that distinctive yellow rolling through the neighborhood letting us know that school is in session.
Crystal Kelly is a feature writer for Bizarre Bytes with those unusual facts that you only need to know for Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy or to stump your in-laws.
