Manchester Bus crash

[Resident]

Yesterday day a bus, part of the Bee Network, in Manchester slammed into a low bridge, injuring multiple passengers, one said to be critical.

This immediately went across our industry & there is a lot of speculation as to how it could have happened, including from me.

There is footage, on social media, of the event from what appears to be a Ring security camera.

Tracking data from the vehicle (publically accessible) shows the bus was off route after turning right one junction too early

Bus driver arrested after 20 people injured in Manchester crash

The bus hit the Bridgewater Canal Aqueduct on Barton Lane in Eccles on Monday, with the top level of the vehicle torn off and a passenger ejected from the top deck.

news.sky.com

 

[Resident]

New driver perhaps?

Been told that the driver was a 50yr old male. I mean he could have just started as part of a career change.

I've got my money on he didn't know the route but management told him to do it and just follow the route guide (printed on paper). He's turned one junction too early and was looking at the guide not the road and hit the bridge. The sad part about that is if that's the case, management will deny all knowledge of doing so.

Bus Drivers - We drive them and get thrown under them.

 

[Resident]

The bridge height restriction appears to be signposted, and also has a pre height warning check with hanging chains. He should have noticed this ahead of time

Having looked on Maps. There's a bar prior to the bridge. How did he get under that?

 

[Resident]

What would they have to deny? They gave him a route that avoided the bridge, he messed it up (fine, we all miss a turning every now and again) and then missed all the warning signs about not driving under the bridge (no one else's fault but his).

Use of route guides in lieu of proper training is a big safety no-no in the industry yet managers will push people into doing it, particularly newer drivers who don't know any better.

I get you have a kindred kind of connection with the guy, being a bus driver yourself, but that's some Olympic level mental gymnastics going on there to try and exonerate him.

You misunderstand me, hitting the bridge is 100% the driver. No question of that but in transport incidents it's not just the incident that gets investigated, it's also the lead up to the incident. Was something done/not done to prevent it. Is there a requirement to change a regulation/procedure etc.

IF it is how I speculated then either replacing him with a driver who knew the route or buddying him with a driver that knew to guide him (which is how route learning is supposed to be done) would have prevented it from happening in the first place. That falls upon management and that's what investigators will look at.

However all too often a manager will tell a driver to do something, it'll backfire and then the manager denies doing so when asked by investigators. . I've personally pushed back on manager's telling me to go against not only company policy but industry regs too.

The bar has hanging chains that will hit a vehicle that's too tall, but it doesn't stop the vehicle. The idea is it should alert the driver to the incoming low bridge.

Having looked back on the Streetview. It appears the chains are missing on the side that the bus came from

 

[Resident]

wait. buses don't have any kind of gps navigation built in? like even a mobile phone can do it and give audio cues

you'd think minimum buses would have like routes programmed in to them which you can select.

we still trapped in the 90s? you'd think buses would even have some kind of height sensor in them... what would it cost like £5

Health and safety gone mad, but in all the wrong places... it seems...

GPS navigation, no. The ticket systems we use at our firm as capable but you have to lease the option from the manufacturer.

However our system does include an overheight warning system, based on GPS and it does work (well now we've ironed out some of the false positives,like the 6ft 6ft pedestrian underpass that kept flagging up as a bridge).

I believe this particular crash vehicle was operated by Stagecoach and because it means spending some money, they're still using older ticket system not capable of such systems

Educate us: what is proper training in this instance?

In this instance the procedure for correct route learning is to send a driver who is already trained and experienced on the route with the driver that doesn't know it. The experienced driver, given 'Mentor' status, then guides the learning driver through the route, giving additional advice like point out tricky corners, narrows etc.

I'm often called upon to mentor drivers on routes, mostly because I know most of our catalog

1 report of one losing its roof to hitting a tree

I remember the tree one. I believe it was put down as a freak incident

 

[Resident]

you'd think they'd have minimum GPS and acceleration sensors just for tracking metrics and driver standards.

but I guess the drivers would be against it, probably a union somewhere holding us back to the 1980s, outraged that buses aren't operated by 2 people anymore.

Missed this one in the reply last night.

Our fleet uses telematics via GreedRoad. Again it's a subscription service, the bus company don't own/operate it.

Other companies have used similar in the past but have abandoned it because of cost and the fact that it's accuracy is spotty at best.

Sensors need constant recalibration as they drift out often. I can get on one bus, brake from 20mph to 0 hard and it'll not register, another bus will red flag a normal stop from 10mph.

Because of this our union has forced the company to abandon disciplinary action for 'poor GreenRoad' scores and now it's only accessed in incidents of passenger injury or collisions

 

[Resident]

Wow thats crazy. Nothing to say, hope everyone recovers. :/

Driver needs a pay cut or something

Driver will be taking a drastic cut in both pay and living expenses very shortly.

Job & licence will be gone.
Custodial sentence is very likely