Each year we hear about a lot of accidents where vehicles have rear-ended buses who are parked at their stops with people attempting to board the buses. Sometimes these buses are School Buses with out children aboard. One recent think tank participant mentioned this after reading in the local paper of three such incidents involving city buses in a two-week period. That is just to many accidents to accept.

Having been in the bus washing business along with other types of transportation vehicles for some 27-years this has always concerned me as well. I think this is especially happening in places with visual sensory perception overload, all the signs and lights drown out the carbon stained flashing bus tail lights. People who are driving are looking around at everything else and those lights are dull because of the soot build-up on the backs of buses from the diesel fuel smoke. I remember the bus washing contracts we always had to put extra care into cleaning them, other wise you could not see these lights very well. www.BusWashGuys.com .

It seems the flashing lights are a smart idea, yet perhaps there should be some moving parts back there on the buses too, you see moving objects attract the eye and thus all the local signage competing for the attention of the brain and the eye are not able to compete with innate characteristics to notice and register motion and moving objects you see? So be thinking on this in 2006.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/