I get off and walk. I generally proceed ahead of the bus, in the road. The bus rides within inches of my tire. Regardless of me getting off and walking around, the local bus drivers find it appropriate to be extremely close to me, attempting to scare me off the road.

Are you sure they're intentionally messing with you? It's probably not a lot of fun to pass a bike in a freaking school bus. Soccer moms in Suburbans have a hard enough time of it.

I don't encounter many buses with the signs on them, but my biggest gripe with waiting behind them is sucking bus exhaust. Waiting across from them is only mildly annoying.

I speed up before the stop sign arm swings out. Otherwise, I wait, which takes about a minute or less. Like a few have said, the law does not take passing a school bus lightly.

I don't care if it came about recently or has been here for ages: that is absolutely irrelevant. If the kid is not old/mature enough to be out and about near roads on his own, then he shouldn't be walking there by himself, whether it be from a school bus, to a school bus, or elsewhere. Have an adult come out and meet him. If he is, then by default he understands how to cross the street safely.

But it's not even so much the law that bothers me; it's the attitude towards this law versus other laws that don't involve school kids. Even if you are on a bicycle and proceed slowly and carefully, making 100% sure that hitting any children around is physically impossible, you'll still be considered to have committed a terrible crime and nabbed by any cop who sees this. Yet when a driver is trying to run a cyclist off the road, or nearly wipes out a bunch of pedestrians making a right turn, it's considered okay and socially acceptable. Because in the first case it's the precious CHILDREN who are involved and anyone who breaks a law that has anything to do with CHILDREN is evil, regardless of how much potential for harm there actually was. Because there was a kid disembarking a school bus who was killed by an impatient driver fifty seven years ago, and everyone still remembers this awful event. No one, though, gives a rat's ass about the many pedestrian and cyclists have been murdered by impatient drivers during the same period, and got away with it after uttering the magic "I didn't see him" words. And no one questions the terrible driving of the school bus drivers themselves, ironically. After all, they are transporting CHILDREN, and if you need to nearly squash a couple of pedestrians in crosswalk to make sure the CHILDREN are on time for their field trip, that's all right, go right ahead...

That's why I call that law overenforced, and the attitude towards breaking that particular law (while accepting breaking many other ones, even if doing so is clearly more dangerous to some innocent people involved) - ridiculous.

uhhh.......wow.

I get off and walk.

I sympathize with the sentiment, but in this context that whole complaint is a non-sequiter. A rule protecting children boarding/departing buses and crossing streets in doing so does not preclude better societal treatment of and legal protection for cyclists.

May I suggest the venerable Usenet document "Constructing a Logical Arugment" and the little truth table exercise it provides. I often use it to examine my assumptions and inferences when I know I'm being dogmatic about something.

Or you could be like me. One day I rolled slowly up behind a stopped school bus on a quite street and forgot to unclip from my peddles until it was too late. I landed in a pile then quickly jumped to my feet like "I meant to do that ". I'm sure it was entertaining for the kids looking out the back windows.

I stop and wait for the bus...of course I also get in line and wait my turn at traffic lights (as opposed to "filtering forward" (cutting in line)...

This was posted this evening on a local TV station's Web site. Ironic, ain't it?

Train Hits School Bus Near Dexter
ROSWELL, N.M. -- State police said three children suffered minor injuries when a train struck a school bus that was crossing the tracks on N.M. 2 between Dexter and Roswell.

(Read the full story at http://www.koat.com/news/19049961/detail.html)

I now return you to your senseless blathering about whether school buses ought, perhaps, to look for trains. :D

^ LOL. Don't worry, someone will be sure to report back about how unlikely that was to have happened. When they're not your kids, telling the drivers to gun it past train tracks and demanding the right to weave through street-crossing kindergarteners seems like a good idea. :O)

I wouldn't bother to walk or ride past a stopped school bus. I ride past city buses all the time, but that's because I know they are going to be going down a different road than I am. If they were going to pass me back immediately, I wouldn't pass them because setting myself up to be passed by large motor vehicles doesn't make sense to me.