Yesterday, my daughter (a sophomore honor student), was late for her early period bus. She ran the last block or so to make it. Bus driver didn’t see her, but the cars did–one honked and the bus put the Stop sign back out and waited for her.
She had to cross the road to enter the bus. You know those yellow bars that extend across the front for safety? Her backpack caught on the end as she was tearing around the thing and snagged the end of the bar. She says she felt it give, but it didn’t fall off.
She got on the bus, thanked the driver for waiting and told her that she thought she had hit “that bar”. As soon as she said it, the whole bus heard a thud. And more honks.
Safety bar had fallen onto the road. The whole bus cracked up!
Driver asked her her address. She gave it to her. She told me later that she spent the whole day worried that she would be called down to the dean’s office and yelled at. Or that the bus company would call me and that I would send her a text Howler (ala Harry Potter fame). I wouldn’t have sent her a Howler, btw.
For some reason, I find this incident amusing.
But, I have some questions. How are these bars made? Why are they so fragile? And who incurs the cost of replacment?
These are questions for our #1Bus Guy, but anyone else who wants to answer or speculate is fine with me…
I wouldn’t worry about it. If all it took to make it fall of its hinge was getting caught in some kid’s backpack, I would question whether or not it had been inspected lately.
From what I’ve seen these units are basically retrofits and operate by small motor or lever assembly. (I’m assuming the length of the arm or blade and the limited power available in a bolt on 12V accessory motor means that it needs to be lighweight. All the ones I’ve seen seem to be fairly thin and fragile and wobble quite a bit when activated. It’s not surprising the snagged backpack of a walking student could detach one.
But I tried to find his email addy (I had planned to send it to him, not post a thread) and I don’t know how to access the member’s stuff. Do I have to find a thread that has him in it, and then click on his name etc? The member’s list is disabled.
thank you.
IANACBF, either-and her Powers aren’t all that strong as yet (witness today, when she missed the bus entirely!).
I would email you but you have your emailed not visible to members.
I looked for a thread he was posting in and click on the User Public profile to get his email when available.
Sometimes I have to do and advanced search to find the user.
I broke a bus once - I just opened the window. Razzin’ frazzin’ things were hard as hell to open. Remember the little sliders that you had to push just right to get to move at all? Well, I finally got the sweet spot and the window slid down. It seemed a normal window opening to me, but I guess it hit the bottom too hard. Entire thing shattered, but stayed intact in the frame, so it was full of those window spiderwebs. Looked pretty cool. The driver stopped the bus and came back and inspected it, said it should hold, and went on. We kinda leaned away from the window 'till we got off.
Sorry I’m late, I was out last night, and busy this morning.
The crossover arms are made intentionally somewhat fragile. Their intent is to steer kids around so they don’t walk DIRECTLY in front of the bus. It forces them to walk out so many feet away so that they’re not hiding in a blind spot.
The replacement cost of the thing is about $50-$60, and I can’t imagine they’d ask your daughter to reimburse the cost. I checked just for kicks, and right now, we have 14 of the suckers sitting on a shelf just waiting for one to fall off or get broken. Happens all the time, should be no big deal.
