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Post by DT 11 on Jan 4, 2024 12:07:25 GMT
Can someone explain to me why all these new electric buses now have no middle seat at the back? Even the single deckers have started this. It was considered dangerous as someone could be thrown out of the seat if the bus breaks hard. Some buses I remember the middle seat had two or one handrails inbetween. Overall I would say no different to seats facing backwards. If the bus suddenly had to brake you could end up flying into someone’s face…
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Post by londonbuses on Jan 4, 2024 12:12:45 GMT
It was considered dangerous as someone could be thrown out of the seat if the bus breaks hard. And how many times has this ever happened? Safety first is fair enough but the risk is far greater for standing passengers being thrown around and even floored in an emergency. Sometimes by nothing more than harsh braking by the driver - some are far from perfect and definitely never went through the Chiswick school of motoring! My partner uses London buses daily and reports being thrown around as a standing passenger at least once a week. She has ended up on the floor twice in the past year. Are we to ban standing passengers on safety grounds as well? What about making bus seat belts compulsory? Where does one draw the line of Common Sense? I suspect the other reason, that I doubt would ever be publicly stated, is that it is a deterrent to the homeless from using the back row of seats as somewhere to sleep.
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Post by Volvo on Jan 4, 2024 15:01:45 GMT
And how many times has this ever happened? Safety first is fair enough but the risk is far greater for standing passengers being thrown around and even floored in an emergency. Sometimes by nothing more than harsh braking by the driver - some are far from perfect and definitely never went through the Chiswick school of motoring! My partner uses London buses daily and reports being thrown around as a standing passenger at least once a week. She has ended up on the floor twice in the past year. Are we to ban standing passengers on safety grounds as well? What about making bus seat belts compulsory? Where does one draw the line of Common Sense? I suspect the other reason, that I doubt would ever be publicly stated, is that it is a deterrent to the homeless from using the back row of seats as somewhere to sleep. This is a good point.
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Post by Volvo on Jan 4, 2024 15:02:29 GMT
It was considered dangerous as someone could be thrown out of the seat if the bus breaks hard. And how many times has this ever happened? Safety first is fair enough but the risk is far greater for standing passengers being thrown around and even floored in an emergency. Sometimes by nothing more than harsh braking by the driver - some are far from perfect and definitely never went through the Chiswick school of motoring! My partner uses London buses daily and reports being thrown around as a standing passenger at least once a week. She has ended up on the floor twice in the past year. Are we to ban standing passengers on safety grounds as well? What about making bus seat belts compulsory? Where does one draw the line of Common Sense? You actually gave in a detail a response I was going to give in short about standing passenger safety.
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Post by Volvo on Jan 4, 2024 15:03:22 GMT
It was considered dangerous as someone could be thrown out of the seat if the bus breaks hard. Some buses I remember the middle seat had two or one handrails inbetween. Overall I would say no different to seats facing backwards. If the bus suddenly had to brake you could end up flying into someone’s face… I agree with this also.
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Post by mondraker275 on Jan 4, 2024 17:49:10 GMT
Can someone explain to me why all these new electric buses now have no middle seat at the back? Even the single deckers have started this. It was considered dangerous as someone could be thrown out of the seat if the bus breaks hard. I am intrigued. Firstly I assume this is a new bus spec and new buses happen to be electric rather than you get increased chance of being thrown from an electric bus. They are fast accelerators but not sure they brake any different. Also, with regards to physics, if you were thrown from your seat then it would be safer to fall forward into emptiness than hit your head on the seat in front. So that seat seems the safest on the bus to me. I like the homeless theory but you would not give up a seat or two for that reason.
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Post by wirewiper on Jan 4, 2024 18:00:15 GMT
It was considered dangerous as someone could be thrown out of the seat if the bus breaks hard. I am intrigued. Firstly I assume this is a new bus spec and new buses happen to be electric rather than you get increased chance of being thrown from an electric bus. They are fast accelerators but not sure they brake any different. Also, with regards to physics, if you were thrown from your seat then it would be safer to fall forward into emptiness than hit your head on the seat in front. So that seat seems the safest on the bus to me. I like the homeless theory but you would not give up a seat or two for that reason. There has been a lot of research into how people are thrown around in a bus when it brakes sharply or is involved in a collision. This research has informed the new safety standards which TfL is requiring in all buses that are new from this year onward. It is actually safer to hit the seat in front which will absorb and deflect your forward motion so you drop back into your seat, than to be thrown forward onto the floor.
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Post by matthieu1221 on Jan 4, 2024 19:37:06 GMT
In addition to the safety aspect, I was under the impression that this was just London catching up with the rest of the country by making a less cramped last row of seats?
With regards to the safety aspect, in Hong Kong, all seats are now to be fitted with safety belts but prior to this only select ones had to. These include the front row of the upper deck, seats facing backward facing seats and seats facing nothing. This followed research following some quite unfortunate accidents over the many years that these were the most dangerous seats in a collision. The removal of the seat rather than the installation of safety belts seems to be a cheaper solution in addition to making it less cramped (lots of modifications needed to install seat belts -- in short it's costly, makes the bus heavier and needs seats to be firmly fixed to the floor with some structural strengthening or something along those lines).
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Post by gwiwer on Jan 4, 2024 22:11:51 GMT
We have had the seat-belt argument for service buses in the UK more than once.
Whilst there is a case for them in some situations it has been decreed that probability of any injury having regard to many years of records and statistics is balanced against convenience and attractiveness-of-use by the majority. There is also a valid argument which states that the time taken for bus passengers to sit and buckle up, and to unbuckle before they stand to alight, would add very significantly to already slow journey times and adversely affect the viability of the service as a whole.
Buses remain one of the safest forms of land transport when viewed in terms of passenger-kilometres-per-injury. School buses where all (or most) users are going to the same destination, may be young and also less aware of their environment, plus coaches which are engaged in longer-distance travel, which typically travel much faster than local buses and where passengers are not boarding and alighting every minute or two in (sometimes large) numbers are quite reasonably required to be fitted with lap belts and use must be made of them.
Let's not try to re-invent this wheel whether in Parliament or online.
The industry needs all the sensible support it can get if it is not to nose-dive into oblivion in the next few years. When even many urban routes are unable to run profitably never mind inter-urban and regional links, then we must do what we can to ensure survival of our bus networks.
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Post by redbus on Jan 5, 2024 0:01:07 GMT
I am intrigued. Firstly I assume this is a new bus spec and new buses happen to be electric rather than you get increased chance of being thrown from an electric bus. They are fast accelerators but not sure they brake any different. Also, with regards to physics, if you were thrown from your seat then it would be safer to fall forward into emptiness than hit your head on the seat in front. So that seat seems the safest on the bus to me. I like the homeless theory but you would not give up a seat or two for that reason. There has been a lot of research into how people are thrown around in a bus when it brakes sharply or is involved in a collision. This research has informed the new safety standards which TfL is requiring in all buses that are new from this year onward. It is actually safer to hit the seat in front which will absorb and deflect your forward motion so you drop back into your seat, than to be thrown forward onto the floor. Sure, but in the real world how many injuries have been sustained by passengers in that middle back seat? Is the problem more theoretical than actual? Surely if this were a real problem with middle back seat passengers sustaining worse injuries these seats would have been removed years ago? As for standing passengers are they really less exposed to injury than the middle rear seat passenger? What is the research that says that the rear middle seat be removed yet it is safe for standing passengers?
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Post by surab21 on Jan 5, 2024 0:30:48 GMT
Out of interest, are there any examples around the world of improvements in passenger safety for those standing? Anyone got any ideas other than more handrails (but then where would you place them)?
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Post by matthieu1221 on Jan 5, 2024 12:29:46 GMT
Out of interest, are there any examples around the world of improvements in passenger safety for those standing? Anyone got any ideas other than more handrails (but then where would you place them)? Banning standing has been floated as an idea in Hong Kong on buses that run on expressways. Dismissed as completely unfeasible due to obvious capacity issues. The idea then morphed into 'premium' bus services in which all passengers get a seat -- more about comfort than safety.
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Post by capitalomnibus on Jan 5, 2024 12:57:41 GMT
It was considered dangerous as someone could be thrown out of the seat if the bus breaks hard. And how many times has this ever happened? Safety first is fair enough but the risk is far greater for standing passengers being thrown around and even floored in an emergency. Sometimes by nothing more than harsh braking by the driver - some are far from perfect and definitely never went through the Chiswick school of motoring! My partner uses London buses daily and reports being thrown around as a standing passenger at least once a week. She has ended up on the floor twice in the past year. Are we to ban standing passengers on safety grounds as well? What about making bus seat belts compulsory? Where does one draw the line of Common Sense? It does not happen often and there has been a lot of cases of this happening on anyone on the rear bench due to the back to back seats in front of it. They may be trying to minimise the risk with ONE seat, but with four others it is a joke. To quote an old phrase, common sense is not so common anymore
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Post by capitalomnibus on Jan 5, 2024 13:01:27 GMT
I am intrigued. Firstly I assume this is a new bus spec and new buses happen to be electric rather than you get increased chance of being thrown from an electric bus. They are fast accelerators but not sure they brake any different. Also, with regards to physics, if you were thrown from your seat then it would be safer to fall forward into emptiness than hit your head on the seat in front. So that seat seems the safest on the bus to me. I like the homeless theory but you would not give up a seat or two for that reason. There has been a lot of research into how people are thrown around in a bus when it brakes sharply or is involved in a collision. This research has informed the new safety standards which TfL is requiring in all buses that are new from this year onward. It is actually safer to hit the seat in front which will absorb and deflect your forward motion so you drop back into your seat, than to be thrown forward onto the floor. But people who have been sitting at the corner window on the rear lower deck have gone forward and hit their head etc on the floor or the wheelarch area. It is total rubbish and there are far more pressing things than taking safety lessons from an idiot that is trying to make money out of TfL as an adivsor.
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Post by SN17MOA on Jan 5, 2024 21:58:22 GMT
Something I've always wondered is who decides to put a bus in service in the morning? Is it the driver that picks whatever bus they like to a route or the controller? I know garages can be full so if it's the former, the driver can then pick whatever bus they can take out without moving other ones.
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