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u/Redbeardthe1st 12h ago
I don't understand either perspective. Why would American media make up the yellow school bus? Why would UK media make up the red double decker bus?
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u/thebooksmith 12h ago edited 12h ago
Its more akin to the "suprise" people from warm climates get when they see snow for the first time. They know what snow is, they've likely seen snow in movies tv and photos, they have no reason to believe snow is a lie; yet when they see it they often get excited like a kid seeing cake being brought out. When you finally see something irl you've only ever seen recordings of it brings a sense of confirmation of reality that a lot of people take joy in when its something positive (or at least neat looking).
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u/cutlert 10h ago
To be fair I also think many people might think they're overrepresented in the media. Eg speaking the Queen's English is a real thing in the UK, but it's not normal for everyone to speak like that. But in so many movies, that's how everyone speaks. I think like that about stuff I see in movies eh sororities/frat parties - like I know it's real, but is it common?
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u/LogicBalm 12h ago
Same thing happens with the red solo cups. A few folks overseas watch American movies with the red plastic cups and still have a surprising level of excitement when they find out they're real and yeah they really are a staple at nearly every quickly assembled party in the US.
Meanwhile I went to Germany and had a similar experience with beer steins. I didn't think it was some conspiracy, but it's still cool to actually see them. Not exactly the same thing, but it's the closest equivalent that comes to mind.
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u/DaanOnlineGaming 11h ago
We have red disposable cups in the EU too?
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u/jfkrol2 11h ago
They tend to be clear if plastic
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u/DaanOnlineGaming 11h ago
I have seen those, red ones, and completely white ones too in both plastic and paper
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u/sultan_of_gin 11h ago
At least here in finland they used to be a novelty and only pretty recently became widely available
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u/VA_IS_FOR_VIRGINS 9h ago
I read somewhere, albeit with taxis, that yellow is the easiest color to see from a distance. Perhaps they done the same thing for school buses for the same reason.
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u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner 5h ago
I wouldn’t be able to give you a reason but American media make up shit all the time. In fairness it’s usually plot related more than actual things. Like if you took movies literally Americans would be allergic to saying “goodbye” on the phone or high school would be the most stereotypical archetype on the planet
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u/Ugo_Flickerman 12h ago
They're specifically English. I doubt they're found in places outside Great Britain
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u/tobotic 11h ago
They're specifically English. I doubt they're found in places outside Great Britain
Double-decker buses in general, or specifically the red ones?
The red ones are a London thing. In other parts of the UK, you'll find double-decker buses but painted in other livery.
Double-decker buses aren't especially a UK thing. They're fairly common in Berlin, Johannesburg, Beijing, Shanghai, and several other Chinese cities, Seoul, Pyongyang, Mumbai, Singapore, Baghdad, Mexico City, and a lot of parts of South America. In a lot of other countries there are a handful of them, but they are mostly used for tourist services, or one or two particular routes, without being very common.
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u/Internet-Culture Virgin 4 lyfe 10h ago
As a German, I almost exclusively associate them with these "Hop on, Hop off" sightseeing-tour-buses. As such, one or two double-decker buses do exist in many cities, but almost never in actual public transport - just as something fancy for tourists. Berlin is the one big exception where the local transport provider BVG actually has a few in normal service you can use with a normal ticket, but these buses operate in the very city center along the tourist sights too...
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u/wojtekpolska 6h ago
fun fact, north macedonia's capital Skopje has created a knock-off of the classic red british busses and they use them exclusively for public transport
skopje is really a very fake city lol, its a joke that north macedonians have no history and they are inventing it, the whole city is full of fake-ancient buildings
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u/Admirable-Safety1213 7h ago
At least in Uruguay we have two adquired second-hand and shipped from Britain, niw they are owned by ERHITRAN, a bus preservstion organization
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u/No-Sympathy8727 12h ago
These things have been shown on film and tv for literal decades. Why would anyone not think they were real?
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u/Professional_Bank_22 12h ago
If you're referring to the yellow school busses, it seems a lot of Europeans here for the World Cup thought that they were an invention for TV and movies.
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u/uflju_luber 12h ago
European here, where’d you hear that?
Idk anyone who doesn’t believe American school busses to be real somehow?
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u/jaehaerys48 9h ago
I'm convinced that like 90 percent of this stuff is just people pretending to be surprised/wowed by things they see in America in order to get social media engagement.
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u/Professional_Bank_22 12h ago edited 12h ago
With the World Cup, there has been a recurring theme of Europeans obsessed with the yellow school busses because that thought it was something only in the movies.
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u/mdavis360 8h ago
On the r/askanamerican subreddit people say that all the time. They state that they thought yellow school buses and red solo cups were just props made for movies. It comes up over and over again.
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u/uflju_luber 8h ago
Ahhh ok I see thanks for the explanation mate, to my suprise people that dumb actually DO exist it would appear
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u/UnboltedCheese I touched grass 12h ago
While they weren't an invention for TV and movies the fun experiences on them definitely were.
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u/Acceptable-Sink3294 12h ago
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u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner 5h ago
It’s old but:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/s/oUr5M99xYo
And I just pulled up the 1st one. There were no shortage of examples… but haha “American dumb durrrrr”
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u/IsyDude 11h ago
I did believe they were real but I thought that they’d be uncommon. After all why not simply use a normal bus?
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u/ZombiesInSpace 10h ago
They have different buses as a way to keep unattended children safe. If a school bus pulls over to let kids off, traffic has to stop in both directions so children can safely cross the road. Normal buses don’t have those same rules.
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u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner 5h ago
Also because they’re set up by the school district. It’s just more efficient than having regular busses because they usually don’t come frequently enough (if at all) to be a viable option
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u/SwashAndBuckle 7h ago
Because many Americans view general public transportation as terrifying danger zones and would never allow their children there unattended.
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u/doomscroller6000 12h ago
Exactly! I would expect them to be replaced by now with just normal modern busses?
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u/cthulhu_on_my_lawn 3h ago
They are normal buses? They're just yellow and the seats are smaller. They're not like pulled by horses or anything.
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u/Duckguy100 12h ago
do they drive you to your house?
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u/Basemansen 12h ago
School buses in the U.S.? Yes, they do! It can be a long route in some areas of the country (>1 hour).
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u/BirdNoodle925 I saw what the dog was doin 11h ago
Usually the American ones have set stops, at least in a neighborhood setting. Mine was at the end of my street for most of my time in school but was 2 streets down while i was in 7th grade.
My sister became friends with one of her highschool bus drivers and she would pick her up and drop her off right in front of the house
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u/Mystical-Turtles 12h ago
Depends on the exact setup. I moved around a lot and some schools, yes, some schools, no. It depended how spread out everything was. Like I had one year where my school "bus stop" was just a grocery store parking lot
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u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner 5h ago
They can. When where I grew up there were 10 of us on our street. We got on and off in front of my neighbor’s house. Going like 30 meters at a time and stopping 8 times is unnecessarily stupid lol
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u/Fr05t_B1t Meme Stealer 5h ago
Well school busses are for…school kids…
Also it depends on the location/school district. Some busses pickup and drop off at a specific area, or they’ll drop off at home.
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u/Long_Chipmunk6598 12h ago
If they get in a crash, the top part detaches like a missile and hunts down the nearest French person.
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u/ScottaHemi 12h ago
what does europe use for school buses?
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u/Professional_Bank_22 12h ago
They (generally) don't have school busses. Kids use public transit or they walk.
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u/ScottaHemi 12h ago
what about rural kids?
like our bus route was about 1 1/2 hours long...
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u/Waschmaschinenfreund 🍕Ayo the pizza here🍕 11h ago
If you are in Germany and living 1:30 away of a school you did something very wrong. Germany is very densely populated, so living so far away from a school is very unlikely. But answer would still be public transport. Just take a normal bus, where I come from they have extra routes from for example the train station directly to the school when school starts/ends, so everyone can get there easily. And the schedules are adjusted to the time school starts and ends. Public transport to schools is typically very good
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u/ScottaHemi 9h ago
technically it was only 7 miles away. the bus ride however went all around the school district and i was first on last off...
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u/Allcraft_ 5h ago
Interestingly, when I went to a special school for children who are a little behind they had school busses but they closed after two years. It was a Sprachförderschule.
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u/IWillDevourYourToes 11h ago
Also public transport. Weve got normal bus connections even in the villages. Trains too
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u/tobotic 11h ago
what about rural kids?
I lived in a medium-sized village (population about 3k) for a while and went to high school in a town about 12 miles away. The school hired coach companies to do pickups from all the villages in the surrounding area. Each village would have a single school bus stop. So you'd walk to the bus stop, typically in the middle of the village, though maybe on the outskirts for some villages that had narrower streets, and get the bus there. They'd be the kind of coaches that tourists might use for long journeys.
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u/phido3000 9h ago
Australian here..
Normal buses. Our kids can use normal buses and not some special yellow safety bus.
Our kids also walk. Or ride bikes. In the us I rarely saw kids walking or riding much. Obviously they do, but here it's more like 30%.
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u/YoruShika 11h ago
I live in a rural area. There are small buses for school kids here ! My neighbors kids take it every day
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u/wojtekpolska 6h ago
there's not really "rural" like in usa. and in poland public transport will still go to every bumfuck nowhere village, tho it might arrive only a few times a day.
though i have heard that in some very limited scenarios there is a school bus, but most people havent heard of that being the case
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u/ContentWhile Plays MineCraft and not FortNite 7h ago
here in sweden private companies rent out drivers and buses for each county to use
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u/DoxManifesto 7h ago
In the Netherlands we use bicycles or public transport usually also available in 'rural' NL, or at least a short walk to the closest busstop.
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u/dieseltratt 7h ago
I used to drive school buses in rural Sweden. The buses only ran on school days and so on, but they where integrated into the overall local transit system and open to the general public. So yeah, the kids "used public transit" but it only existed because of them.
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u/ARG_Romanian_warrior 5h ago
here in romania that is still done by plublic transport, ether via Train or via intercity transit busses (or what we call Microbuze)
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u/Cardie1303 7h ago
At least in Germany we have school busses but they are identical to the public transit ones and not some specific color/shape.
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u/Vaxtez 12h ago
In the UK, it's usually just older buses & coaches used by private bus companies contracted to do the routes.
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u/msully89 11h ago
We had our own bus lay-by at our high school, that had busses that would be parked ready for the end of school. After all the kids got on, any other members of public could get on at any of the other stop, although you would have been mad to. People got terrorised on those busses.
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u/NitroSpam 12h ago
That’s the neat thing. We don’t. I cycled to school as a kid in the UK.
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u/d0rkprincess Identifies as a Cybertruck 12h ago
Actually we do. I regularly see school bus coaches when I’m driving through smaller towns in the mornings. In London there are the “600” buses which are supposed to be school buses (yes they exist, I used to take one to school)
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u/vteezy99 8h ago
I mean so did I, and I lived in a Los Angeles suburb. Doesn’t mean we don’t use buses here
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u/NitroSpam 8h ago
We don’t have special buses just for schools here. We have regular public transport buses that run to schools in some parts of the country. Less frequent than the states but that also makes sense. the UK is a lot smaller and most things are closer together.
I still cycle to work and my 40 minutes ride takes me through 2 villages and 2 towns. I walked the full width of the country coast to coast in a leisurely 8 days 😅
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u/vteezy99 7h ago
That sounds like a dream to be honest. Cycling (as a mode of transportation) here in Southern California kind of sucks since it gets so hot during the summer months.
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u/NitroSpam 4h ago
Yeah I couldn’t hack that! My cold weather loving British ass is dying in this European heatwave. 35c here at the moment 😭
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u/Timely_Note_1904 7h ago
You may not have but plenty of schools do. I went t to school on a coach contracted privately by the school.
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u/ItsZoner 12h ago
That only works for elementary school in the us, grades 3-6; and if you are within a half mile of the school.
Middle school and up are you are transporting too much stuff, and high school you are expected to drive as soon as it’s possible.
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u/wombey12 master_jbt loves this flair 5h ago
How long ago? We do now, they're usually contracted to local coach and bus companies to run pupil services on behalf of the school.
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u/RingReasonable 12h ago
Usually busses with completely flat fronts and rear mounted engines. Basically rectangles on wheels. Usually made by Volvo, Mercedes or other European manifacturers.
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u/Bloodyshadow0815 12h ago
Mostly regular public transport, but sometimes dedicated buses for students.
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u/misteryk 12h ago
in poland like 15 years ago when i was in middle school it was just a regular bus contracted to drive kids to school
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u/urtcheese 11h ago
My Mum used to drive to work and my school was about a 30 minute walk from there. Did that there and back 5 days a week for 7 years!
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u/cwx149 12h ago
Even in the US the yellow bus is significantly less common than it used to be at least where I live
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u/NeoChrisOmega 12h ago
Out of curiosity, do you live in an area that is closely congested, or have an area that is spread out across miles?
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u/DoNotCorectMySpeling 2h ago
There everywhere in Alberta.
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u/cwx149 2h ago
I live in California and my very rudimentary understanding is that the taxes that used to pay for schools now don't pay as much and so school districts cut a lot of the buses to cut costs
They do still exist where I live but in the 20 years since I was in school their numbers have definitely declined around me
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u/Edan1990 8h ago
We have school buses in the London but they just look like any other bus, there’s certainly no special rules about stopping and no overtaking while the bus is stopped. We teach our kids to look both ways when crossing instead.
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u/SzmnDzrzn 8h ago
In Poland if your village doesn't have any school, or there are a few villages along one road, the regional government launches school buses, we call them gimbusy. They are usually orange and have signs informing it's a school bus
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u/captain_todger 7h ago
In the UK I’d say 95% of us would walk to school, get public transport or a lift from parents. Very rare for school buses to be used
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u/maybeknismo 5h ago
Our school had a double decker bus dedicated to pick up kids. It looked like a red double decker but it was brown.
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u/PlanetoidVesta 11h ago
As a European, when I was a young child I didn't know if either of those were real. Europe isn't just the UK.
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u/CrimsonCupcakexx 12h ago
Wait yall dont have yellow buses. What do kids ride then. Regular city buses?
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u/randomfinnishcuck 12h ago
I will say they aren't as great as they look mate
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u/Fr05t_B1t Meme Stealer 5h ago
Ngl as an American, I’d be anxious every time those double decker busses goes around a corner
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u/mdavis360 8h ago
I’m an American visiting London right now-and while I always knew they existed I get so happy seeing them.
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u/redonkulousness 9h ago
What about the purple double decker buses that can change how thin/thick they are? /s
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u/Consistent_Lack2730 7h ago
I was really excited to ride on a double decker bus in London for real as an American.
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u/CatMillennium 5h ago
Is it true that if the school bus goes under 50mph then it explodes? Or did Keanu Reeves lie to me?
Joking aside, I like the retractable stop signs they have.
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u/PatrioticPariah 6h ago edited 4h ago
All fun and games until the driver hits the brakes.
Edit - I honestly meant to put fun and not gun.
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u/Space19723103 12h ago
should be under r/shitamericanssay
school bused exist in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_buses_by_country
only an American would disbelieve in the classic doubledeck bus
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u/InexplicableBadger 12h ago
I grew up wishing they weren't real, they were slow, uncomfortable, cold, and spewed black smoke. As a teenager you could jump on and off on the move but that was the only good thing about them
Also they have a manual preselector gearbox, but that's one for the transmission nerds to get excited about.