In two areas of the country, from two completely separate sources, school bus-themed music videos have surfaced on the internet this summer. One, from the official Michigan City Area Schools account, takes a light-hearted approach to the serious topic of stopping for school bus drops and pickups. The other, from a Florida driver named Mr. Jay, remixes "Old Town Road" into a jokey song about life behind the wheel of a school bus.
A remix of a Lil Nas X remix, "Washboard Road" is titled after a particularly bumpy route in East Pasco County, Florida, that Jay Heilman drives on a regular basis. Heilman says he heard his students singing "Old Town Road," and he freestyled the chorus off the cuff: "I’m gonna take my bus down the washboard road, I’m gonna drive until my mirrors fall off."
Heilman was poking fun at the road, but he says his mirror actually did fall off on two separate occasions. The rest of the song has lyrics about the kids' constant complaining and pedestrian drivers not stopping when his stop sign is out. The full lyrics are written in the description of the video on YouTube.
The second video, which has equally high levels of production value, is all about safety. "Stop Arm," a reference to the collapsible stop sign on school buses, starts with a statistic: "On just one day, April 23, 2019, Michigan City Area Schools bus drivers recorded 38 motorists ignoring their extended stop arms. Please STOP, before you hurt a child. (It's the law)." The sad and frustrating message then goes black and the video transitions into a group of drivers who start singing, "STOP! when the arrrrrrmmmm is ouuuuutttttt" to the tune of the hit song from The Supremes, "Stop in the Name of Love."
The video pays special emphasis to the part of the law that states both sides of traffic, including oncoming traffic, must stop when a school bus has its stop sign out. We've written about these rules time and time again, but with the school year starting back up, it's never a bad idea to remind the masses. Watch both videos above and below, and please be careful driving around school buses this season.
