h a l f b a k e r yMagical moments of mediocrity.
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There I was this morning waiting at the bus stop with an elderly lady, we were both looking down the road in the direction of a couple of buses on their way towards us.
Neither of the two buses was the 308 I was hankering after, but the lady I was with was looking keenly at the pair of them,
she looked, and looked and they got closer and closer, it wasn't until the first bus was about 3m from us that she started waving her arms wildly and this, being a 'request stop' wasn't enough to get the bus driver to slam on his brakes, instead he drove on, requiring probably 20 metres to effect a safe stop.
There are a number of common sense solutions for instance:
1) The lady in question could acquire some glasses - which I have found to be useful for seeing things at a distance
2) Buses could drive more slowly, allowing them to stop more promptly
3) Bus stops should have an audio channel, announcing forthcoming buses
4) There could be a button to press for each of the bus numbers that serve the stop, so you press the 308 button and the bus driver receives a 'ding' suggesting he should stop when his bus gets say 500m away.
5) The lady could have just asked me.
This being the halfbakery though, I'd like to suggest having the number of the bus writ large right the way across the windscreen of the bus (they can do this now so it's easy for the driver to look out, but people looking in can see the writing).
Bus Spoilers
http://www.halfbake...idea/Bus_20Spoilers
wherein DrCurry suggests "a 'Request' button on the bus stop" [calum, Nov 01 2004]
[link]
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Wouldn't huge numbers like 747918298847236 and 747913293347286 also be hard to tell apart? |
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Having actually been there and done that (in terms of squinting at bus numbers with blurry vision from visits to the eye clinic), I favor #4, but someone already suggested that. |
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But I do like those all-over graphics, so croissant anyway. |
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[phun] - I'm glad I didn't suggest Roman numerals now. |
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Approach #4 would seem like the best, since it would allow bus drivers to know further in advance where they'd have to stop. An annunciator at the stop to indicate the approaching bus would also be a useful and interesting concept that could be implemented fairly easily. |
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mum: is that a number 77 bus?
me: what bus? |
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[jscottpete], I'm not sure where you're
going there, but it doesn't sound
good.
What if she was leaving
home to go out somewhere? |
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Suggestion 6) I often advise visually-impaired people to go out and buy some big black-on-white cardboard numbers (eg. a 3, an 0 and an 8), arrange them in a plastic sleeve (eg. 308), and wave this at oncoming buses. When the driver of the 308 sees this, s/he stops. Seems to work pretty well, I'm told. |
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You've lost me there too, [jsp]. |
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FirstBus, the group that runs the buses round here gives some of its through-Glasgow routes colours, including the diarrhiffic "Beige Line". |
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//Resistor Buses//
Black buses raped our young girls but virgins go without. |
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