School buses backing up?? (cul-de-sac, neighborhood, middle school)

[douknownam]

Growing up in Florida, I've had my share of school bus rides to and from school. However, I had never experienced a school bus having to back up and turn around out of a neighborhood in order to drop kids off. My assumption is that they bus driver decides that it's safer to drop the kids off one block into a subdivision instead of the main road. Does anyone know if this is a common occurrence/policy or is the driver going out of their way to accommodate the children? I don't have anything against it, but just find it odd that I've see 2 different buses pulling into my neighborhood to drop off the children and then backing up into another intersection to turn around.

Seems a little inefficient to me. Anyway, just curious because I was stopped behind one of these buses and it started backing up as if I knew exactly what it was trying to do (this was a while back when I first moved into the neighborhood). In the end, it may be in the driver's handbook or something but I don't have any knowledge of this.

[twingles]

We have a bus that does that in our neighborhood. We are zoned for traditional and those kids go to yer round - just looking at the bus route (because I've followed it thru the neighbor hood) and where the school is in relation to us, I can think of a much more efficient route. But instead of efficient routes we get buses backing up and bell schedule changes. Oh well!

One time my kids' bus had a sub driver and they pulled into our neighborhood and did the old backing up and going forward thing and completely changed the route, so the bus came from the opposite direction it usually does. We were like WTF is going on when it showed up at stop on the other side of the road. My kids thought it was pretty funny, they were asking the bus driver "WHAT are you doing?!?"

[CHTransplant]

My neighborhood has a loop on the main road. The buses back up to turn around rather than taking two minutes to simply drive around the loop.

[flamtap]

Most of the "why" questions you might ask can be answered by this:

WCPSS: School bus routes and stops (http://www.wcpss.net/transportation/bus_routes.html - broken link)

The board subscribes to state statutes and guidelines regarding the location of bus stops. As assigned by the superintendent, central transportation staff shall implement this strategy in cooperation with
the appropriate administrative authority at the local schools.

Bus stops are placed no closer than two-tenths of a mile apart unless safety hazards exist.
Buses are routed on state-maintained roads only.
Buses are generally prohibited from traveling into cul-de-sacs.
Generally, bus stops are placed on corners.
Recommended walking distances to a bus stop for students:

Elementary student - three-tenths of a mile
Middle School student - five-tenths of a mile
High School student - five-tenths of a mile

flamtap