Why do busses, trucks have a nearly horizontal steering wheel compared to regular cars?
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Bus driver here.
Large vehicles like buses and trucks have very large steering wheels relative to most passenger vehicles, so you can exert finer control, and have more torque to turn the wheels (larger circumference, more power/easier to turn). The latter is not as crucial given that most large vehicles today use power assisted steering, but in an situation where the power steering failed- an extremely rare occurrence, you would need to revert to “armstrong” steering (yanking it around with brute force).
If you look carefully, though, you’ll find that the large, flat-oriented steering wheel is more common on “cab-over” designs, such as flat-fronted semi trailers and the transit-style flat-front buses (known as Type D buses). That’s because the steering wheels are beneath or even well behind the driver, requiring the steering shaft to be more vertically oriented relative to the driver, which necessitates the use of a flatter steering wheel, which also means it needs to be larger to operate it properly.
When you look at what are typically called “conventional” buses and trucks- with buses they’re the Type C- which have the engine in front of the driver under a large nose, along with the steering wheels under the engine, you’ll find that while the steering wheel is frequently somewhat larger than in a passenger vehicle, it’s more vertically-oriented and not nearly as large as the cab-over designs, because the angle of the steering shaft is different.
**Edit:** There seems to be a thankfully, very few people, who’ve taken issue with my explanation, specifically that I first talked about the *size* of the steering wheel instead of going directly to the orientation. But in my mind this is *explain* like I’m five, not *answer* like I’m five, and in order to properly explain, it’s necessary to start with the size because- as I go on to explain, not all trucks/buses have the oversized steering wheels, depending mostly on the orientation of the steering shaft to the wheels.
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