Ok, excuse me a moment while I rant…
A month or so ago, my brother was driving me and my other brother home from school. Coming out of the school parkinglot onto the driveway, we got hit with the front bumper of the school bus in the lane in beside the one we were trying to get into. Evidently the bus driver decided that she didn’t want to wait half a second to let him have some room to get out, so when the car in front of her bus moved up a smidge, so did she and BOOM. The front end of the car right above the wheel got a nice sized dent in it. The bus had, of course, no damage. This guy comes from the school board and plays it like its my brother’s fault and says he won’t press charges. My dad took the car to the shop and you know what the first words out of the mechanic’s mouth are? “Who backed into you?”
Well, since we have no “credible witnesses” (my other brother and I don’t count) we had to pay the charges. UGH. Whats worse is that the bus driver is still driving just like before.
BTW, this happened on school property and yet, not one teacher, principal came out to see if everyone was ok.
School Bus Drivers- Work for 8.00 an hour, and have a split shift running from 6am to 5pm. Driving experience helpful, but not needed. Penchant for the color yellow preferred.
I can sympathize. For many years, my dad used his little VW Rabbit as a commuter vehicle. One day, while the car was parked and he at work, it got hit by a tour bus. Didn’t do any serious damage to the car, but it had never been quite right after that.
In fact, that Rabbit would have been mine one day, had it not been one of those little things that went wrong after the bus hit it.
OMG, another person this has happened to! When I was 14 our bus “was hit” by a car. We all saw what happened, the kid was backing out of his driveway when the bus broadsided him. Unless a car can move sideways, their’s no way he hit the bus. However, the bus company tried to make it sound like it him who’d hit the bus. The whole passanger side of his car was totalled, don’t you think the damage would have been less extensive if he’d merely backed into the bus?? The bus driver was forced into retirement a little later, and I couldn’t help but laugh when one of the daycare providers I visited for NH Reads was telling me that she thought the woman was going to get them all killed just driving a car.
Besides the skewered blame, the think I remeber most about the accident (oh wait, other than the bus company calling all our parents, but not telling them there were no injuries) was that the kid, whose car got totalled, usually drove his kid sister home from school, but didn’t that day for who knows what reason, so she’d just gotten off the bus a minute before the accident. If she’d been in the passenger seat as usual, we’d have been going to her funeral for sure.
geeze there has got to be some book that says this is possible at the school board. It could be called “Ways to Get Out of Paying For Car Damages” 
That is lucky for her. We were really lucky that the bus hit us where it did instead of the door or somewhere where we were sitting.
Wonko- love that ad, maybe I’ll send it to the school board 