Letter to the Editor Thursday January 22, 2015

Spot the bus

A short while ago both the Northland Age and the Northern Advocate printed a short and uninspired item on the legal speed when passing a school bus which had stopped to discharge cargo. The item read as if the reporter had bigger, better, and more important issues to record for posterity, but had this space to fill first.

By coincidence, the Age, a month or so earlier, had printed a similar item by Kaitaia's senior cop, PC Plod, who was a little more enthusiastic, and a good deal more menacing in his treatment of the subject.

Neither writer bothered to identify any possible problem associated with driver compliance (which I could have explained to them 20 years ago), or any realistic remedy to the obvious problem (which again I could have told them 35 years ago, had they bothered to ask).

Specifically, today's school buses do not look like a school bus.

Attached to the joint Age/Advocate item was a picture of the back end of a 'gO' bus in 'gO' livery, with a red and white bull's eye in the right-hand window, which blended in well with the company sign writing. Only on second glance did one notice the piddling little 'school bus' sign, in the middle of the artwork.

At about the same time I had followed another 'gO' bus north from Pamapuria (School?) towards Kaitaia. This vehicle had a backside tarted up like a transvestite, strip club madame (there used to be a beaut in Wellington in the 1970s), and it was only when the bus slowed down in the middle of nowhere that I realised there was also a 'school bus' sign, insignificant amongst the artistry.

Another example manifested itself to me a few years ago. Travelling south into Warkworth, on my way to work in the pre-dawn in a typical Warkworth fog, I came almost up against a Gubbs Motors bus in full livery. Pure fog white, with two very small and high-mounted red tail lights. Almost invisible in the fog when one had both eyes down at road level - just to make sure that the road is still there.

Although this was well before school time, the 'school bus' sign was on display, small, high up, and invisible in the fog.

Today's school buses do not look like a 'school bus' ... Period!

By coincidence, in the late 1970s I was a rugby team member on two tours through a lot of North America. Everywhere the school buses stuck out conspicuously in their burnt orange and black livery. Broad chevrons covered their entire rear end. No missing them. No mistakes, no excuses.

This silly season, on one of the unreality shows on the idiot box, such a distinctive bus drove casually through a crowd scene in a typical Hollywood Boulevard live shoot.

Some of us will remember the old AEB school buses, K-class Bedfords in red and cream scratched paint work, and looking the part.

So what can we do about it? Rhetorical question, because the answer is nothing individually. Because LTNZ (or whatever they call themselves this month) does not listen to the great unwashed public. Ask our council to take action as a community good? Just joking! Even the police would be pushing it uphill with their nose, because the Road Transport Association has a very strong political hotline. Which is also why our railways are stuffed.

You try getting all the bus companies to repaint their buses' backsides to look like a school bus, and not the prissy lime-yellow of the signs.

DON BLUMHARDT

Kaitaia