Odd occurrences during bus journeys?

[LiftFan]

What's the weirdest thing that's happened during any journey you've been on a bus?

Mine is probably the time the X34 had a complete electrical failure where the key was removed from the ignition and the bus (Solo) stayed on! That and the windscreen wipers, full beams were stuck on and the indicators were broken.

The other time was when the bus (E200) had a different problem of NOTHING electrical working at the bus stop! The driver and us all went into Costa and waited for the next one...

 

[Qwerty133]

Possibly the time the bus crashed into a van parked on the side of the road, and then just continued as though nothing had happened.

 

[SpacePhoenix]

A nice waterfall down the stairs of an open top bus

 

[Martin1988]

Remember a few years ago traveling on a bus through Winterbourne High Street when suddenly some children/teenagers chucked a water bomb at the bus windows.

Also had a memorable journey a few years ago on the last bus of the night between Bristol and Yate. Was sitting on the top deck right at the back and another passenger boarded and sat right in front of me.

He didn't say a word for he whole journey and then just as we entered Yate, without warning he proceeded to spill the contents of his stomach all over the floor of the bus!

 

[12CSVT]

On the X5 Cambridge to Oxford, some numpty in an artic cut a corrner at a rounabout and side-swiped the bus, then continued as if nothing had happened.

 

[Ianno87]

Back in the early 2000s my school bus home had one of its windows fall out on several occasions. (South Lancs Travel Leyland Tiger formerly of Trent Barton Transpeak usage). A couple of people even alighted via the window (not something I would condone)...

Or being on a 125 from Preston to Bolton (again, early 2000s) when the two drivers decided to literally race each other from Whittle-le-Woods to Chorley Bus Station. Again something I do not condone and if today I would immediately report on Twitter.

On a 22 going through Burnage when one of the local youths used the side of the double decker bus as a gigantic moving wall to kick his football against (to be fair, it did rebound nicely straight back to him...)

 

[pdeaves]

My in-laws were once on a bus somewhere near Watchet that suffered a brake failure down a hill. The driver managed to control it enough to go up a verge and into a hedge to stop. No injuries, the bus didn't topple over or anything like that but it must have been a scary moment!

 

[Whistler40145]

A couple of years ago I was travelling on the 555 from Keswick to Lancaster and we were travelling around Thirlmere, it was during the winter time with lots of water rushing down from the mountains and we had a fountain spouting up inside the bus.

 

[dgl]

I heard reports of the bus from Weymouth college to Portland once when they used old deckers on the return service that the bus could not make it up the hill and had to somehow managed to get a run up to the hill and made it the second time.
Also in Nov. last year had a bus that seemed to have either an engine or gearbox failure and wouldn't get above ~30 if that even going along Chesil beach road which is rather flat, ended up ditching the bus at Victroia square and had to wait for another.

 

[northwichcat]

On an old coach being used on a school contract the door got jammed and the driver gave it a hard shove and it became unattached at the bottom. Then a man walk up with a clipboard and told the driver he was from VOSA and doing random checks on vehicles. Needless to say the coach failed the check!

 

[blue87]

Not my video but this happened on my bus route home
when the River Tame in Witton, Birmingham burst it's banks. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p5xIWIImUpM

 

[JonathanH]

1996 - I was travelling on a Stagecoach Mercedes minibus between Coventry and Rugby when the gearstick came loose in Binley Woods - a replacement bus was sourced for the rest of the journey. The mechanic was apparently going to drive the bus back to the depot using his feet to control the remaining stub of the gearstick.

 

[Jetlagged]

We were following a coach along the M2 from Dover when the luggage compartment floor fell into the road. They had been on a beer run to France and the driver had allowed too many crates of beer to be loaded causing a structural failure. As if that wasn't bad enough, they also had crates piled up along the aisle, creating a danger to passengers needing to evacuate in an emergency. Speaking to other drivers a week later, the end result was a great interest shown not just by the Police but also by HM Customs. Can you imaging getting back to the yard and explaining that one to the boss?

 

[philthetube]

When I used to do hypermarket runs to Calais the limit was 2 cases per person.

I once saw a coach drop its boot before even getting out of the car park in Calais.

This would be less likely to happen with modern coaches though as the weight distribution would be better, but that would not stop them being overweight though,

I cannot imagine customs being too interested in this one, you could always carry a lot of beer back from france, assuming 50 people on the coach then probably ok, traffic commissioners different story though.

 

[Jetlagged]

When I used to do hypermarket runs to Calais the limit was 2 cases per person.

I once saw a coach drop its boot before even getting out of the car park in Calais.

This would be less likely to happen with modern coaches though as the weight distribution would be better, but that would not stop them being overweight though,

I cannot imagine customs being too interested in this one, you could always carry a lot of beer back from france, assuming 50 people on the coach then probably ok, traffic commissioners different story though.

I think the Customs interest was, "Well if they have that, what else are we likely to find?" I agree. I bet the Traffic Commissioners had a ball with that one.

 

[Cowley]

In the late 80s I was an apprentice at the British Road Services garage in Exeter when near the end of the day I was told to steam clean the inside of a UK Fish Co trailer.
It took me the best part of an hour and afterwards I had to get two buses home.
I sat at the back of each bus absolutely honking of gone off fish while all the passengers were sniffing the air and commenting on the disgusting smell that seemed to be all around.
Luckily nobody put two and two together and realised it was me but they probably did after I'd got off.
I had to throw all my clothes in the bin when I got home.

Recently I caught a bus into Exeter and went upstairs. Thinking it was a bit strange that everybody was sitting near the back I sat fairly near the front and realised I was in pretty odd company, there was a man and woman sitting either side at the front who were obviously together. The bloke spent the journey (thankfully brief) calling out number plates to himself while the woman had made a sort of booth for herself by blue tacking pictures of Jason Donovan on to the windows all around her seat.

I always preferred Kylie myself.

 

[Busaholic]

Possibly the time the bus crashed into a van parked on the side of the road, and then just continued as though nothing had happened.

I had much the same sort of experience in the 1970s. I was on a Routemaster in London on a Saturday afternoon when traffic was light and three Routemasters on the same route travelling from central London up to Crystal Palace decided to have a race once they'd crawled all the way in convoy to Herne Hill. Croxted Road became their racetrack and the bus I was on went straight into a skip parked at the side of the road. I was at the front upstairs and managed to brace myself (there were no other passengers on my bus iirc) but the incredible thing was that the bus just reversed away from the skip afterwards and continued on. When we got to Crystal Palace there was an inspector to whom the driver immediately spoke in order to take his bus into its nearby home garage, Norwood, giving a cock and bull story as to what had occurred.

 

[Bookd]

Going back 50 odd years I was on a bus arriving at Hartlepool bus station, which had a parking area about the size of a football field. As this was evening there was only one other bus parked there, which my driver managed to sidestep breaking a window which hit the mirror of the other vehicle.

 

[krus_aragon]

A friend of mine had an eventful journey home on a school bus some decades ago. As the bus was making a turn the rear window fell out and shattered on the road behind it! The glass was reportedly only being held in with gaffer tape.

 

[Jetlagged]

An ex-colleague left his job in sleepy Lincolnshire and headed for the bright lights of London finishing up driving on the 113. He was on an early turn and heading through Mill Hill towards Oxford Circus when he spotted a house on fire and two people trapped at an upstairs window. The quick thinking lad reversed his double decker up to the house and opened the rear emergency window, allowing the trapped peeps to climb through to safety. The first we knew of it was when we saw his photo on the front page of the paper next morning.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A friend of mine had an eventful journey home on a school bus some decades ago. As the bus was making a turn the rear window fell out and shattered on the road behind it! The glass was reportedly only being held in with gaffer tape.

I saw that happen (upstairs side window) on a double decker at Ormskirk bus station years ago. Narrowly missed a waiting passenger.

 

[GusB]

I saw that happen (upstairs side window) on a double decker at Ormskirk bus station years ago. Narrowly missed a waiting passenger.

The ECW Olympians that we had up here were originally fitted with hoppers in the upstairs front windows. They were replaced fairly early on for the same reason.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Both from when I was at University.

The first, it was a night service (2-3am ish, my memory is fuzzy!) and some idiot thought it was funny to just continually press the stop bell. The driver got fed up, stopped (in the middle of the road) and shouted down the bus for whoever was doing that to get off and the bus wouldn't move until they did. The person didn't get off for a good 5 minutes, and the driver did wait there, in the middle of the road, until the guy got off. I don't think the guy made any friends that night!

The second was on campus, at Bath uni there is a fairly small turning area where there are two separate bus stops, one for First and one for Wessex. It is tight enough that if two services come around the same time, and one of them isn't parked 100% right, then it blocks the other one. I was on a First bus waiting for it to leave but it couldn't get around the turning area because a Wessex bus had parked poorly and was blocking it, the driver got out and started hammering on the drivers window of the Wessex bus while shouting very loudly for the Wessex driver to move his bus. It had the intended result, but not seen a bus driver that "animated" before.

 

[Strathclyder]

The strangest one to happen recently was the back-panel of the driver's cab of the First E300 I was on suddenly coming loose and falling out on top of a passenger sitting right beside it (no injuries resulted, thankfully), exposing the wiring contained with the cab bulkhead. With the bus being taken out of service as a result, I had to get the next one (which was thankfully only a minute or two behind).

 

[beany]

When I drove buses I had a few great memories.
One was when I was route learning on the bracknell to Victoria coach station london green line.
We had coaches back then(modern double deckers now) and the emergency escape door was right at the back.well flat out going down the m4 the emergency door decides to swing open.only myself and trainer on coach so he runs down the back to pull it closed,but he's having trouble getting it to stay shut.
When he thinks it's closed ,he returned to me but it swings open again ! So back he runs to close it again.
We come down elevated section of m4 and soon turn off for hammersmith broadway which is basically a huge congested roundabout.then the door swings open making a van swerve.trainer runs back to hold the door closed ,but now I don't know where I'm going,so he is shouting directions down the coach.he stayed there all the way to Victoria shouting telling me where to go.
I think back and laugh about it,but it was very stressful at the time being a new driver,never driven in central london before !

 

[GatwickDepress]

Not odd, just rather pleasant; the driver of the 7 yesterday had Jeff Wayne's Musical Version War of the Worlds blasting from the cab. It was a nice start to a horrible day.

 

[paddington]

Once when I was taking the bus to school, the driver "forgot" to turn at a certain junction, which meant he had to continue along a narrow single carriageway for another 10 minutes to reach a suitable place where he could turn around. We got a detention for being late despite it not being our fault...

 

[northwichcat]

Evening services on the 398 bus route in Huddersfield used to go via Ashenhurst Student Village - in to the grounds, reverse and back out. Except one day the driver drove past the point where he was supposed to reverse to a place where it wasn't large enough to turn the bus around and reversed the back wheel went in to a ditch. The bus had to be abandoned with a driver and a guide having to come back later to get it moved. At the end of the academic year they stopped sending buses in to the student village!

 

[SteveHFC]

A couple from me - both occurring on journeys to Portsmouth College with People's Provincial in the early 90s

The first, the bus turned up (I got on near the start of the route), and was surprised to see the MD driving. Before pulling away, he turned round and admitted he didn't know which way we were supposed to go, and so we had to direct him all the way to college!

The second, we had stopped to pick up passengers, and sitting in the back row of seats (was a Leyland National) felt an almighty bang as something hit the back of the bus.

Turned to look out of the rear window to see a cyclist in a heap on the road. Turned out he'd had his head down while cycling and hadn't seen the bus and had cycled head first into the bus. Fortunately he was just bruised - and was wearing a helmet so no serious damage done.

The dent he made in the back of the bus was still there when the bus was withdrawn a few years later.

 

[neilmc]

I once took the Lincolnshire service bus from Doncaster to Scunthorpe - the whole route was actually Sheffield to Grimsby, an exceptionally long stage carriage route. Unfortunately the female driver didn't really know the route and turned on to the M18 instead of the A18 - cue unplanned mileage of around 30 miles to get back to the right road.

We were very late into Scunthorpe by which time I was the only passenger and the driver pleaded with me not to give the game away to the Scunthorpe inspectors when she put the delay down to heavy traffic in South Yorkshire. I reckon I can reveal all some thirty-five years later.