What the $£%&@#?...!

It's amazing what passengers do, once on a bus. Most are normal folk, they sit (or stand) peacefully, waiting for their stop, and get off. A few might even call a "Thank you" to the driver (which is always appreciated, let me remind you).

A few, though, mostly the younger (teenagers and the twenty-somethings), if they can reach it, will hit the emergency door release in thick traffic, as they want off the bus *now*, and not when it gets to the stop, and the hell with the bus company instructions to their drivers not to open the doors at any place other than a bus stop (it's both due to liability and insurance problems that these pesky rules exist, folks - back in the mists of time, someone probably got sued for being nice enough to let someone off outside their home/bookie/Chinese takeaway, or something)...

Anyhow, the result can on occasion be amusing. Rarely, it's side-splittingly hilarious. More often than not though, it's amazing that no-one gets hurt or worse...

A couple of cases in point...

Case #1...

A few weeks back, in heavy traffic, in the outside lane of two lanes leading to a set of traffic lights, one of my colleagues had a group of youths hit the emergeny door release, whereupon they leapt out, presumably to go somewhere and grab a spot of fast food. Little did they expext to nearly be mounted on the handlebars of a pizza delivery moped - I don't know how near a miss it was, but my colleague was mentioning the words hair and breadth... Moral: It's one thing to look for fast food. It's entirely another to, through stupidity, *become* the fast food...

Case #2...

A couple of years ago, someone opened the doors using the emergency door release on my bus. We were coming to a stop, doing maybe 5mph, to service a bus stop. I was on a rare rest day, on a route other than my normal one. The stop was outside a major London underground station. As the passenger leapt out of the bus - in mid air, he flew straight into a lamp-post. As dumb luck would have it, a safety feature on the buses we drive means that at slower speeds, the brakes automatically lock on, to stop the bus if the emergency door release is used: The bus, did, indeed, stop. Which is just as well for our human bell-striker, as he rebounded back against the side of the bus with a resoundingly wet smack-like sound, and slid to the ground, somewhat pole-axed (pun intended), coming to rest a few scant inches from the rear wheels. He declined medical aid or assistance and vanished off a couple of minutes later, probably nursing one of the biggest and embarrassing headaches of the 21st century... Moral: Look before you leap!

So why am I mentioning this? I'm hoping that one of those muppits who seem to suffer suicidal impatience actually reads this entry, takes it on board (so to speak), and never tried to become a human canon-ball from a bus!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!