London Crash - 13 Injured

[Bletchleyite]

ISTR a OPO shorter version is being ordered for such routes, it is shorter by one window bay in the rear section.

 

[Antman]

Wikipedia has spoken, with its usual mix of half-truths and fabrication. Only 2 LTs were involved in the accident on routes 24 and 148, plus a non-LT on the 211. This is stated even though the photos clearly show an LT on the 11 embedded in the LT in front. The four routes running the length of Victoria Street are (unusually) operated by four different companies, so there is no chance of a blind having been rewound to disguise the facts. Doh!
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Then the LT is even less fit-for-purpose than I'd assumed. Still, no need to worry about emergency exits when they crash, as they have almost as many as they do seats.

Do they actually have any more accidents than any other type of bus?:roll:

 

[Busaholic]

Do they actually have any more accidents than any other type of bus?:roll:

Poorly worded on my part, I meant they have more entrances, and therefore exits too,than other types. As for accidents, usually down to poor driving rather than poor buses.

 

[swj99]

The old 'accelerator jammed/brakes failed' chestnut! I'll wager that no such defect will be found!

You're probably right, because it can be extremely difficult to replicate a defect, especially if it has only happened once in many miles. I had a jammed accelerator linkage on an Audi, many years ago while joining a motorway from the slip road. I realized there was a problem when I took my foot off the pedal but the car carried on gaining speed. I switched the engine off, stopped and freed the offending linkage and continued my journey.
I never had it happen again on that car, so I guess if there'd been a crash, people might have made the same 'old chestnut' comment, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. It was quite interesting watching the speedo go through 60, 70, 80 and keep rising, and of course, even when I pressed the brake pedal, it made hardly any difference.

Anyway, back to the story. Are there more bus crashes these days, or is it just that they get more widely reported than they used to ?

The banner down the side of the one in the newspaper site pic is ironic. I doubt it was a particularly nice day for many of the people on the buses involved in that.

 

[BestWestern]

You're probably right, because it can be extremely difficult to replicate a defect, especially if it has only happened once in many miles. I had a jammed accelerator linkage on an Audi, many years ago while joining a motorway from the slip road. I realized there was a problem when I took my foot off the pedal but the car carried on gaining speed. I switched the engine off, stopped and freed the offending linkage and continued my journey.
I never had it happen again on that car, so I guess if there'd been a crash, people might have made the same 'old chestnut' comment, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. It was quite interesting watching the speedo go through 60, 70, 80 and keep rising, and of course, even when I pressed the brake pedal, it made hardly any difference.

That's a fair point, and I would agree that not every fault, even critical ones, are constant or can be repliated (though the pedant in me would point out that here we're probably not looking at an old fashioned throttle likage, more likely electric I'd have thought, particularly as these are hybrids).

But anyway, yes I agree that non-diagnosis of a fault doesn't mean that it isn't there. Another angle though is vehicle familiarisation. You would like to think that drivers of big, expensive buses with lots of people on would be adequately trained in all aspects of its control, including how to stop the thing if for whatever reason the normal method becomes impossible. I'd have thought handbrake/master switch etc etc would be an immediate consideration.

 

[swj99]

.....You would like to think that drivers of big, expensive buses with lots of people on would be adequately trained in all aspects of its control, including how to stop the thing if for whatever reason the normal method becomes impossible. I'd have thought handbrake/master switch etc etc would be an immediate consideration.

I agree, at least I hope they are.

But as a car driver, I know the old cars were easier to control in the event of a problem than the newer ones (don't misunderstand, they are better the rest of the time). I can't say whether this is the case with newer commercial and passenger carrying vehicles, because my only experience of driving these was nearly 20 years ago, and the amount of technology has increased since them.
The cars I used to drive back in the day, and I'm talking about late 70s and early 80s stuff, they had belt driven power steering, if they had it at all, and they had vacuum servo brakes.
As a car enthusiast at the time, I spent many hours driving and also repairing those cars, so I suppose you could say I was thrown in at the deep end. I once had to do a 3 point turn in a saloon car with a snapped power steering belt, and even though I worked up a sweat doing it, it wasn't the end of the world. I'm not complaining because it was useful experience for a scenario such as one where you're halfway round a roundabout when the engine stalls, so you lose power assistance to the steering. Because I was already used to steering the car in that state, it was no big deal to me when it kept stalling due to a faulty battery.

But it does raise the perfectly reasonable question of what it would be like for someone else who had only ever driven that car in it's proper functioning state, and suddenly there was no power steering. The steering suddenly feels several times heavier. I know the answer to this because my ex wife had the misfortune of this happening to her as she was pulling into our driveway. As a result, she scraped the front wing of the car on a gate post. We were lucky it was only a gate post. But what if it had happened in busy traffic, or somewhere with lots of pedestrians, such as the West End on a friday night ?

Many of the older commercial vehicles from the 60s and 70s didn't even have power steering, but the steering was geared quite low so they could still be driven around. The main difficulty where you'd really notice the difference between this and a small car, was when trying to park. The modern trucks and buses have steering systems which are designed with power assistance in mind. And if that power assistance is suddenly lost, how much harder is it for the driver to continue to control that vehicle, other than in a relatively straight line ?

An old friend of mine had an Austin K9 ex radio truck, with no power steering, or any other form of power assistance. The steering was so heavy that that the steering wheel once came off in his hands whilst on the A27.

 

[BestWestern]

I wouldn't like to be at the helm of a bus with a sudden loss of power steering, certainly. The most catastrophic issue I've ever had the displeasure of was a turbo failure, which although appearing dramatic (lots of smoke), just meant I had a very sluggish bus to nurse off the motorway!

The difference with these supposed 'runaway bus' incidents, though, is that there should always be a means of stopping a vehicle, one way or another. If your steering fails, it fails; not much you can do. But a vehicle allegedly tanking onwards if it's own accord could be brought to halt by various means, or so you would surely think? (Mentioned many times on similar threads, but handbrake/footbrake/electrical master switch/engine stop switch/gear selector switch etc etc). Few people would criticise a driver for being taken aback if his vehicle suddenly surges onwards at full throttle, but you'd hope after a couple of seconds the instinct would cut in to attempt one of the above?