Why bus steering wheels are so big

I had never considered the question before, but thought I'd share an answer I discovered in the explainlikeImfive subreddit:

Back in the late Cretaceous when I was learning to drive, most cars and trucks did not have power steering. Larger/heavier vehicles had larger steering wheels because you actually had to muscle the front rolling wheels around to turn the vehicle, and the additional leverage from a larger steering wheel was important. (Incidentally, you could tell if one of your tires was low because it literally got harder to steer. Local truckers and other frequent drivers tended to build up their arm muscles from navigating corners.) My dad's little MG sports car had a 13" steering wheel; my VW van had a 16" steering wheel; pickup trucks' were more typically 17"; and buses were more typically 18-20".

Nowadays, practically every vehicle has power steering assist, but (CyberTruck aside) they're basically all designed so that if the power steering fails, you can still steer the car -- it's just harder to do so. So the big bus steering wheels are still around, as a safety measure.

Additional information at National Bus Sales:

A bus driver has to maneuver through lanes the same size as small cars but with a lot less clearance. With a smaller steering wheel, any adjustments could be too abrupt for safety. With a larger steering wheel, you can make a correction without changing the turning radius of the bus too dramatically. Smaller adjustments won’t cause any instability.

And this response to why the wheel is more horizontal:

This feature has changed over the years and varies in vehicles, but initially, the large steering wheels on buses sat almost horizontally. The driver sits directly above the tires, so for the steering column to correct the tires, the steering wheel needs to be positioned at a different angle. More recent bus models have options for the driver to adjust the position of the wheel.