dmittedly, it is difficult to look back from several thousand miles away and remember the difficulties the novice bus driver encounters when he or she first sits down in the pilot's seat of their recently acquired motor coach.

By that, I mean that driving a bus, to those of us who have been doing it for a while, sort of comes as second nature. As a matter of fact, we sometimes feel a little uncomfortable getting back into a car, with it's lack of elbow room, lack of mobility within its narrow walls and roof and lack of visibility.

It is this topic of visibility which I intend to focus in this article.

Ok, so your heart rate is up a tad; get ready - the first time you drive this 360 square foot house around WILL take your breath away! House-on-wheels can quickly turn into hell-on-wheels if you don't look far enough out the giant windshield. Bus windows are incredibly huge for 2 reasons. Firstly, they were made so that when a bus driver has to jam on the brakes because some fool in a small car cuts sharply in front of the bus and comes to a dead stop, all passengers can look nervously out the front window to personally witness the driver's next mistake. Secondly, they were made so that, while all passengers are comfortably climate controlled, the driver could enjoy either broiling to death in summer or freezing to death in winter.

As a side benefit, and obviously unbeknownst to bus manufacturers (or else they would have eliminated this benefit), the view is like no other you have ever experienced. Let's state the obvious, here; you sit above most all other vehicles, at least the one's which will cause you the most difficulty (what I refer to as hondacivicitis - the smaller the car, the worse it behaves in front of a bus!).

Well, now that you're up there, look, and I mean just look at the huge view. It is documented that most car drivers focus their eyes at a point approximately 20 to 30 feet in front of their car. For this reason, car manufacturers focus a tremendous amount of energy in the area of stopping distances. Within the first 3 months of driving your bus, you will likely have a near heart-stopping incident where you find that you have left a zero tolerance zone around your bus and have to come to a gut-wrenching halt because you've just driven your bus like you used to drive your car.

So how do we prevent these heart-stoppers? Look ahead. Far ahead. And keep looking there. If you're at a stop light, take a peek at the next intersection. If the light is green there, when you leave the intersection you're in, and it stays green, until you're just about at it, Murphy's Law will take over. The next light WILL turn red and, if you're not prepared, you'll likely find that, with your foot buried on the brake pedal, your house-on-wheels will come to rest in the middle of the intersection staring at a pregnant lady who is using the crosswalk and a cop travelling in the opposite direction. Smile, shrug and put your palms up and otherwise act like you just landed from another planet and most witnesses to this act will likely just look down and shake their heads. You hope!

To review, keep looking ahead as far as possible, use the size of that windshield to your advantage and try to anticipate all possible traffic situations while you're still far enough away to do something about it. After all, you can see most everything you normally can't in a car. This is what is referred to as getting the big picture.

The first drive in your new bus doesn't need to feel like jumping from a bridge with an elastic band tied around your ankle. That feeling will come soon enough!