My son catches a bus from the end of our road to school, but he missed it earlier this week. He said he was there at the usual time, but the bus was early, and although he ran along side the bus, the driver wouldn't stop to let him on.
So I wrote an email to Reading buses - presumably drivers don't have to let anyone on once they've set off, but they shouldn't be ahead of schedule.
Got an email back the next day - they had checked the GPS readings and could see that the bus had stopped at 07.21:28 and left at 07.21:54. And in the CCTV they 'could just spot' son running towards the bus, so the driver wouldn't have seen him. But they apologised for the inconvenience.
Clever stuff!
(Son had thought bus was scheduled for 7.25, but in fact they pointed out that our stop isn't a 'timed stop' - the previous one is, 7.20, and I worked out the driver could just about make it in a minute and a half. As for the bus not stopping, either the driver really didn't see son, or he did but didn't feel he should/could stop, which is fair enough.)
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Most of the commercial vehicles I've driven over the last couple of years have been fitted with trackers, allowing the transport office to see where all the vehicles are in real time as well as how fast they're going and even which way they're pointing! All the systems I've seen so far only update every 10 minutes or when there's an ignition switch event (on/off), so the bus system must be a dedicated setup to allow individual stops/starts to be registered - maybe it flags up operation of the handbrake?
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I'd imagine the bus has a 'black box' recording key parameters including location at very short sampling intervals. Justified originally for accident investigation but now used to monitor driver performance and resolve complaints.
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I pulled the "Bus was early" trick a few times myself.
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Cant do that now, your parents phone up the bus company for video evidence. Its tough being a kid these days.
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Buses and modern technology - Dave_
