Buses and liquid manure spreaders in my town make dashes for freedom

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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There is something in our town of Tübingen, Germany (population 80k) that seems to encourage runaway vehicles. It is a hilly town with an extensive bus network (PDF, 156 kByte).

6 April 2006: A city bus driving down from a higher part of town takes on passengers at a bus stop, using the electrical brake to stop because that stops more gentler than the standard hydraulic brakes. Then the doors won’t close again. As, apparently, the bus drivers are wont to do, the driver decides to do a power off/on reboot by cycling the main circuit breaker which is in a cabinet on the outside of the bus. He shuts off the engine and exits the bus. When he switches off the circuit breaker the electric brake (which brakes when energized) releases and the driver notices that he did not set the handbrake.

The bus (which is half full) leaves on its own, down the road. A passenger grabs the wheel and stops the bus by driving it into a row of bottle recycling containers. No injuries.

25 May 2007: Again a bus drives down the road into downtown, again a bus driver decides to do a power off/on reboot, again the bus rolls off. This time it is full of schoolchildren, and rolls off the road. Fortunately there are some sturdy trees lining the roadside ravine. (picture - the date is incorrectly given as May 2006 instead of May 2007)

The only casualty is the bus driver who is hospitalized for shock. The mayor (whose godchild was in the bus) pushes for better precautions. The city bus company announces that the buses’ software is going to be updated: now there will be a beep when the engine is shut off. (no prizes for guessing when the bus drivers will have forgotten what this is a reminder of).

Our local paper thoughtfully publishes a diagram on where the buses’ brake controls are, just in case bus passengers need this information in the future.

17 or 18 October 2007: A farmer drives his tractor to a field on a hill hear the city center, pulling a 2000-litre tank trailer of liquid manure, for spreading on the field. He gets off to adjust something, apparently not having set the brake.

Tractor and trailer take on speed downhill. They run so fast that after a elevation on the way both tractor and trailer do not leave tracks on the ground for about 10 m (30 ft).

The house of two 80 and 84 old ladies is in the way. Fortunately they are not in their living room when the tractor comes through the wall. The manure trailer does not enter but just deposits its content on the outside of the house.

9 January 2008: Again a bus driver needs to reboot his bus on a downward slope, again he forgets to set the mechanical brake. This time he manages to run fast enough, though, and to catch his bus. As he forgot to report the incident to his employer this only was reported today.

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Is it the rise of the machines? Or the downfall of the humans?

I’ve never heard of buses that needed to be rebooted. Of course in the USA we are not too up to date in public transit issues. :frowning:

Can you provide more information about the buses? Are they trolley buses? Trolley buses run on roads but are powered from overhead wires.

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Bwahahaha! Oh, this is brilliant!

4

They are standard diesel buses, only nowadays that everything is controlled by computerized controllers the old “give it a push” heuristic for faults without clear reason (such as a door not closing) seems to have been superseded by “cycle the computers’ supply voltage”.

5

Isn’t there a university in Tubingen? I saw a movie on the Independent Movie Channel a few weeks ago that was set partly in Tubingen. It was a German movie, sub-titled in English, about a college girl who has seizures; there’s conflict over whether it’s a disease or she’s possessed. Anyway, the exterior shots of Tubingen triggered a serious case of nostalga for me.

What I don’t understand is the frequency with which the bus drivers forget to set the mechanical brake. I mean, there are hills. There are hills!

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I’ve been on a couple of buses, as well as a BART train here in San Francisco that needed a reboot.

The buses are diesel-electric beasties with probably more sensors and control circuitry than the original Apollo rockets that took man to the moon. Sometimes I think they either just need a good surge supressor, or at least better handling of unexpected inputs.

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[QUOTE=tschild]
The house of two 80 and 84 old ladies is in the way. Fortunately they are not in their living room when the tractor comes through the wall. The manure trailer does not enter but just deposits its content on the outside of the house.

[QUOTE]

Now all you need is a truck load of shineola to go with the trailer load of shit.

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A small update: the 2008 runaway bus incident mentioned in the OP apparently was indirectly caused by a security feature introduced after the 2006 and 2007 runaway bus incidents, according to a report in yesterday’s local paper.

The bus software was changed in 2007 to sound an acoustic alarm when the engine was shut off without the mechanical brake being set.

Last week the bus driver braked by electrical brake, shut down the engine, got the acoustic alarm, didn’t recollect what the alarm was for, got outside and switched off the main breaker to reset the alarm. :smack:

Now the buses will be refitted with the bar that separates the driver’s seat from the rest of the buses’ interior being locked when the mechanical brake isn’t set, i.e. the driver won’t be able to leave his position without setting the brake.