http://www.atlanticbusyard.com/Pages/Gen/FCPS.html

Interesting site...and really shows that you can find ANYTHING on the internets. Personally, I was surprised that we spend extra money on something called Child Check Mate to ensure that kids don't get left on the bus. I was expecting some sort of sophisticated pressure-sensing system in each seat, but it is just an alarm that requires the driver to walk the bus. Couldn't you just have a checklist at the end of the day that includes a step like "Check the seats to make sure that no students are hiding or sleeping"?

I know the kid who created that website. He is a walking encyclopedia of school buses. He knows far more about them than I do after 20 years driving one. Even stuff like engine and transmission types and sizes, etc.

For 99.999999% of students, school buses are the height of UNCOOL. They are to be vandalized or destroyed whenever possible. But, every now and then you get a kid that is fascinated by them. They sit up front and watch everything you do...asking questions about the bus or the chatter on the radio. One kid I knew even bought a scanner so he could listen to the bus radio whenever he wanted to.

I've EVEN had a kid who wanted to help me clean my bus on Saturdays. How crazy is that!

They look like normal kids, but there's obviously something "wrong" with them. They keep their passion for school buses a secret to avoid unmerciful razzing by the other kids.

The kid that wanted to help clean has graduated and is now counting the days until she has had her drivers license long enough (3 years, I think) to apply to become a FCPS driver.

bus driver Wrote:
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> I know the kid who created that website. He is a
> walking encyclopedia of school buses. He knows
> far more about them than I do after 20 years
> driving one. Even stuff like engine and
> transmission types and sizes, etc.
>
Sounds like a classic case of Asperger syndrom (a form of autism). People with Asperger's are high functioning, but have some odd social behavior and many become experts fixated on a topic, often at a young age. My wife has a student that know EVERYTHING about dinosaurs and my daughter has a student in camp who is the same way with trains.

Asperger's syndrome? I don't think so. Some people just find their passion early in life. I was one of the "bus nuts" when I was in school (a term many of my friends and I have coined for ourselves). I've now been driving a school bus over 5 years, and am taking business courses at college to work my way up to management. I might be slightly obsessive-compulsive (as a personality trait, NOT the disorder), but I'm certainly not autistic.

Thank goodness for people who have the ability to specialize in narrow technical fields or do research. I really like the website and it would be interesting to turn it into a book for FCPS elementary schools and libraries.

I saw a metro bus in DC where when viewed from the side was a triangle . What is that? What are those Duck busses and what is your opinion on the double deckers?

i like the buses that run on clean natural gas. The ones that go really fast and stuff that jump out into traffic without looking, jumping lights by reading the sigles those are the best

TheKleanKid Wrote:
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> i like the buses that run on clean natural gas.
> The ones that go really fast and stuff that jump
> out into traffic without looking, jumping lights
> by reading the sigles those are the best



That would be Metrobus.

im glad this is not an FCPS site. They already waste enough time and money to begin with..