> Bus drivers don’t need to “practice routes”. Even if they get a turn wrong, the worst is a few minute delay. A long vehicle that does not bend in the middle

> Bus drivers don’t need to “practice routes”. Even if they get a turn wrong, the worst is a few minute delay. A long vehicle that does not bend in the middle has quite a few worse outcomes than a short delay. Fill it with children, and those worse outcomes can include tragedies. There are roads where the crest of the hill can result in the middle of the bus bottoming out, and the wheels at each end hanging in the air. There are roads where a downhill section levels out at such a sharp angle that the nose of the bus will embed in the pavement if you do not cut all the way across the road (into oncoming traffic; which you will NOT want to do with children on board) to reduce the angle. Some turns are simply impossible because the swing of the tail-end of the bus would e.g., take out the signage along the edge of the road. Maps will show a road that appears to continue through, but it is actually discontinuous due to e.g., a canyon; Turning around / backing a 65-80 passenger vehicle is no fun. Worse when full of screaming kids. I had a route where I had no choice but to back a bus down a four block long alley where the mirrors literally scraped on both sides in places due to a doorstep stop for a disabled child, but you always want to avoid live "skills tests". Why on earth would you intentionally add avoidable risk? All this while keeping in mind you need to maintain full awareness/control of the kids at all moments. Because, if you are distracted trying to correct an issue with your route and even something seemingly as minor as one kid stands up and falls, splitting his lip... You get to pull over and radio in to dispatch to call out the state highway patrol for a school bus accident, and wait for the officer to arrive and take the report. And, you get the points on your driving record (affecting insurance, etc.) as if this were an actual vehicle accident where you are at fault (at least in California). Source: Drove school buses my first year in college in a large California city. Quit after another driver had a real accident and the district left her to defend herself against parents' lawsuits. Almost all drivers were college students because the state provided a subsidy to the school districts to hire us. Our route making process was (this was years ago) Thomas guide map book -> left right sheet (a sheet with a column of just L/R streetname) for the route -> drive route to time/test and make corrections. One complication is that the start and end times of the route are fixed, so you must make the route work with those while accounting for traffic.