Not my fault, well not really, it was the bus's fault. Or to be more exact a fault on the bus. I was up in Newton Abbot just about to go when 5 young men in their early twenties boarded the bus to go to Torquay for a night out. No problem with that, they were lively and joking amongst themselves as we came down the Newton road. I, and everyone on the bus could hear them laughing and taking loudly. Then as we came into Torquay the bell rang and I could see in the periscope mirror that they were getting off. As I was approaching the stop and they were coming downstairs the emergency exit alarm began to sound. One of them had opened the emergency exit upstairs as a last minute ' lets have a laugh' idea. Not a big problem but one I could do without. They were all dead nice as they got of the bus, inviting me to have a good evening and thanking me for a nice ride down into town. I sat there thinking, " Nice of them; but one of the bastards had set the alarm off." When they had gone I went upstairs to close the exit and stop the alarm, a very piercing noise those alarms make. Not something you can ignore, not if you want to be able to hear anything the next day.
When I got upstairs to the Exit I could see it was firmly closed, oops, not that. Sorry lads, I hope, after all, you don't all choke on your beer. Must be the one down stairs. Now we have one bus which has had a problem with the downstairs emergency exit alarm for months. It goes off on it's own. A quick glance at the Defect Card. There it was, the last driver had writen that the alarm kept going off. I was driving this bus. The usual way to stop the alarm going off is to open the door and pull the handle firmly to shut the door. On this bus that didn't work. You also had to pull the bar that locks the door in place as well. Now each emergency exit has to be opened every day as part of the early morning inspection (see video). This constant opening and closing has taken it's toll on this door and it now is so battered that the alarm can go off several times a day, usually when the bus is full so you have to struggle passed hundreds of passengers, all who are worried that something serious is wrong in order to slam the door shut. One day the bar will fall of, as it is not designed for closing the door. Hopefully this will happen when I am driving the bus and am in Brixham and the fitters will have top struggle for an hour to get to the bus to fix the problem once and for all. Or maybe spray some WD40 on it as a quick fix.
2 comments:
We have a bus that is like this. The upstairs rear emergency window frame is cracked and the securing bar loose, so the window will flap open and shut unless it is tied shut with a seatbelt. I'm sadly on this bus on its regular route as a passenger and as I get on at the first stop I normally see the window open.
Of course the buzzing of the alarm thoroughly wound up the drivers, but nobody at the depot bothered to respond to the reporting on the report sheets, so eventually one of the fitters removed the buzzer.
Needless to say it isn't safe and is quite distracting having the window flapping open and shut behind you. If someone were to fall out of it, and the bus were inspected by the police or whoever, there would be hell to pay. Drivers have tried to refuse to take it out, but it's a case of "drive it or P45".
UNION!
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