Manchester Bus crash

[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

 

[tom_e]

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.

I'm pretty sure @Resident has confirmed they do in the past.

 

[Efour]

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

Driver needs a pay cut or something

 

[slinxy]

There were earlier ones. I was living in Eccles in the nineties and I remember one then.
One might have thought it might have stuck in the bus company's procedures that double decker buses do not fit under that aqueduct.

THB I did suggest that we ask for a shuttle service using smaller but more regular buses. Just shuttling people from the Eccles or Trafford Centre to the four areas that the bus covers after Eccles/TC.

After Eccles there’s just Liverpool Road all the way to Warrington where it turns to Manchester Road and every other bus goes to Warrington town centre, where I catch the bus to. The other one turns back and heads towards Manchester City centre again.

Heck it’s not that hard for me to walk to Warrington and catch one of their buses to the centre.

But the bus is often late or cancelled due to the very long route it takes, I think it’s an hour and half route in normal traffic.

 

[Nigel Kingdon]

Is no one thinking of the 200 YO aqueduct? That needs an inspection pronto, or 100,000s of galloons of water could soon be causing more havoc on that road.

 

[Hades]

Yes the driver ignored the height restriction signs and is ultimately reponsoble. But this is looking to me like the council also bear some of the responsibility for not maintaining critical signage (the chains) even after several previous vehicles appear to have made the same error.

 

[Efour]

Yeah 2 guys in a cherry picker and then minutes at 3am when they are reported to be askew.

The council should share the blame. I agree.

 

[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

 

[builder22]

maybe it's becuase the drivers are trained to not brake too harsh so they dont catapult their passengers off their seats but that bus could have stopped much quicker, looks like it almost coasts to a stop!

 

[arknor]

maybe it's becuase the drivers are trained to not brake too harsh so they dont catapult their passengers off their seats but that bus could have stopped much quicker, looks like it almost coasts to a stop!

only weighs 10-16tonnes according to google.
Should be able to stop in a parking spots worth of road surely

seems to be about half the weight of a HGV and probably 5x+ the weight of the average overly large car

 

[Semple]

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.

Whilst that may be poor management, the driver should still be fully aware of surroundings. There's normally plenty of signage leading up to low bridges (I assume that's the case here too), so to have missed all of that would be like missing a red light and running over a kid on a bike who's crossing.

I don't think this will go down very well for the driver, fortunately it looks like there were no fatalities - as I imagine that would have resulted in a custodial sentence.

 

[RedMogg]

Can't help but be reminded of this: