Bus Drivers' Rough Driving

[BingMan]

I don't know if it is my advancing years, the bus company I mainly use (High Peak) or the design of the particular buses; but drivers seem to be rougher than they used to be and pay little attention to the comfort of their passengers.
This is most evident in braking. At bus stops, rather than doing comfortable coasting stops, they come to a stop with the brake pedal hard down so that the bus goes down on its "knees", throwing standing passengers forward. They then release the pedal so the springs unwind and throw passenger backwards. This increases dwell time since passengers are reluctant to get up and walk forward before the bus has finished its acrobatics.

In traffic they rely on stamping on brakes rather than anticipatory easing of the gas, and equally use harsh acceleration and direction changes ahead of anticipation.

Are they taught to drive this way?

 

[L401CJF]

No. As operators have cut back running times and minimal time at the terminus over the years the drivers have adapted to make the best of it.

I was a strong believer of take your time and the late running will force them to add more time in eventually. The operator I worked for didn't care so the late running continued and the ragging round to try and get home vaguely on time (or get time for a smoke) continues to this day unfortunately.

 

[GusB]

I don't know if it is my advancing years, the bus company I mainly use (High Peak) or the design of the particular buses; but drivers seem to be rougher than they used to be and pay little attention to the comfort of their passengers.
This is most evident in braking. At bus stops, rather than doing comfortable coasting stops, they come to a stop with the brake pedal hard down so that the bus goes down on its "knees", throwing standing passengers forward. They then release the pedal so the springs unwind and throw passenger backwards. This increases dwell time since passengers are reluctant to get up and walk forward before the bus has finished its acrobatics.

In traffic they rely on stamping on brakes rather than anticipatory easing of the gas, and equally use harsh acceleration and direction changes ahead of anticipation.

Are they taught to drive this way?

No they're not taught to drive that way, but I'd disagree with most of the points that you make here. Some drivers are a little less subtle with the controls than others, certainly, but in my experience it's not all that common; in fact it's probably less common these days when you consider all the extra technology in the cab that monitors fuel consumption etc., not to mention the suite of cameras that buses carry.

 

[computerSaysNo]

I've found that B7RLEs with the Voith gearbox tend to have a very aggressive retarder which is either fully off or fully on. At high speed the vehicle is fine as you can slow down slightly by reducing throttle and not touching the brake pedal, but around town it was annoying and I found it very difficult to brake smoothly.
The air handbrake wasn't ideal in the terms you mention; the actual operation of the brake lags slightly behind the handle position, but it was easy enough to just delay taking your foot off the pedal after applying the handbrake, so I don't see an excuse for not doing this.

 

[Geordie driver]

I don't know if it is my advancing years, the bus company I mainly use (High Peak) or the design of the particular buses; but drivers seem to be rougher than they used to be and pay little attention to the comfort of their passengers.
This is most evident in braking. At bus stops, rather than doing comfortable coasting stops, they come to a stop with the brake pedal hard down so that the bus goes down on its "knees", throwing standing passengers forward. They then release the pedal so the springs unwind and throw passenger backwards. This increases dwell time since passengers are reluctant to get up and walk forward before the bus has finished its acrobatics.

In traffic they rely on stamping on brakes rather than anticipatory easing of the gas, and equally use harsh acceleration and direction changes ahead of anticipation.

Are they taught to drive this way?

The front suspension doesn't "unwind" because the driver the driver takes his foot off the brake, its because braking compresses the front suspension which then rises once you have stopped, basic physics. You don't take your foot off the brake before the hand brake is applied, the bus would set off again.

The lurch might feel more accentuated because the bus changes into first gear as it comes to a stop. Nearly all modern buses are full automatics, the driver has no control other than the throttle as to when the bus changes gear.

A well maintained properly specified bus would not be lurching on its gear change, the bus companies don't see it as a problem.

You could switch it to neutral as you pull up, but everything is on camera and the company doesn't permit you to do this.

For the most part drivers want to provide a decent service. They want a well maintained decently built bus that is smooth and comfortable, who wouldn't? Warm in winter and cool in summer would be nice, but all too often it's the other way round.

Decent running times and a bit of catch up time at the terminus would be nice. So would me winning slimmer of the year, which is about as likely.

I passed my test in a 4 speed crash box manual bus, double declutch on every gear. On my test the instructor placed a cup of water upright in front of me and told me if it tipped over I had failed.

The safety and comfort of your passengers was your first concern. That went out the window years ago.

 

[farwest]

Most drivers I travel with in Cornwall are excellent. The only ones that annoy me are the drivers that belt along unnecessarily fast between stops and then sit ages waiting time.

 

[Mwanesh]

Is it a daily occurrence or a one off.

 

[Smithster]

I've found that B7RLEs with the Voith gearbox tend to have a very aggressive retarder which is either fully off or fully on. At high speed the vehicle is fine as you can slow down slightly by reducing throttle and not touching the brake pedal, but around town it was annoying and I found it very difficult to brake smoothly.
The air handbrake wasn't ideal in the terms you mention; the actual operation of the brake lags slightly behind the handle position, but it was easy enough to just delay taking your foot off the pedal after applying the handbrake, so I don't see an excuse for not doing this.

I agree, Streetlites are notoriously bad for this. The retarder kicks in and jolts the full bus. They are either too sensitive or not responsive enough and the bus over runs. All Voith Gear boxes. Going down the gears is also horrendous.

Also, going back to the original authors post, passengers should remain seated until the bus comes to a stop. Passengers should remain reluctant to stand up.

 

[markymark2000]

I was a strong believer of take your time and the late running will force them to add more time in eventually.

That's an issue though as it gets excessive. The longer bus journey times are, the less people use buses as the journey times aren't competitive and very quickly patronage starts to drop. journey times must be achievable though of course by a good percentage of drivers but if everyone goes slow and steady, you end up with silly long timetables. It'd take 2 hours Liverpool to St Helens on the 10A if everyone took their time.

There has to be a balance of course but to 'take your time and they will add more time in eventually' is basically you saying that you don't want a job. More journey time means more costs and less passengers. Combine this, you hit cuts to the service to make it viable and you begin the spiral of decline. Exactly how D&G run most of their routes. Take a reasonable journey time, increase it by 30% for the slow drivers, their routes all hit cuts as they can't run a service viably with the excessive journey times. Less routes means less drivers needed so depot closures or redundancies or whatever.

The only ones that annoy me are the drivers that belt along unnecessarily fast between stops and then sit ages waiting time.

IF you can go faster and it is completely safe to do so, the bus should go faster. It does no help to the perception of buses if they plod along 20mph below the speed limit nearly being overtaken by cyclists. People perceive buses to be slow enough as it is, without drivers going needlessly slow.

 

[eh1]

As someone who is quite uptight about my own driving and driving smooth, I can tell you that the bus you're driving plays a huge part in how smooth you are. I tend to find my driving gets a little rougher (but certainly not sending people flying) when driving older buses. Voith gearboxes have an awful kick to the retarder and tend to be very difficult to control, whereas our newer B5 and B8s have lovely smooth brakes, and in my opinion can be stopped smooth enough that people don't realise you've come to a halt.

 

[NorthernSpirit]

I don't know if it is my advancing years, the bus company I mainly use (High Peak) or the design of the particular buses; but drivers seem to be rougher than they used to be and pay little attention to the comfort of their passengers.
This is most evident in braking. At bus stops, rather than doing comfortable coasting stops, they come to a stop with the brake pedal hard down so that the bus goes down on its "knees", throwing standing passengers forward. They then release the pedal so the springs unwind and throw passenger backwards. This increases dwell time since passengers are reluctant to get up and walk forward before the bus has finished its acrobatics.

In traffic they rely on stamping on brakes rather than anticipatory easing of the gas, and equally use harsh acceleration and direction changes ahead of anticipation.

Are they taught to drive this way?

When I've used High Peak (usually services 61 Glossop to Buxton and 58 Macclesfield to Chatsworth) I've noticed that the vehicle is quite rough, it probably doesn't help with the 61 only having four minutes layover at either end - surely the farting around at the mini roundabout outside of Whaley Bridge Tesco is one of the issues but that could be solved by simply not serving Tesco and instead stopping outside on the main road, the other is the sheer amount of bends especially through Fernilee. I'm sure some of the drivers may have visualisations that their doing the Lombard RAC Clumber Park or Chatsworth stages but I'm putting it down to the tight timetabling - the 58 timetable I simply cannot remember apart from it doesn't connect with the last 61 in Buxton on a Sunday.

 

[M803UYA]

With the introduction of in cab devices such as Greenroad and Mix telematics (RIBAS) poor driving standards are easily identified by management. If you drove a greenroad fitted vehicle in the manner described by the OP it would be triggering red lights all day long and that will affect the score - which will result in tea and biscuits with the management.

The same applies to fast driving - you'd get buzzed for harsh braking. These telematics systems seem to be standard on most bus and coach fleets now - and given the spreadsheet mentality applied by management these days a 'poor' score would be something very obvious to a desk bound manager. This would be backed up by the many CCTV cameras in modern buses - poor driving would be obvious and you'll benefit from the attention of the management.

There's a whole discussion to be had on the 'benefit' of these devices and why they might be inappropriate for use in the UK. They were designed for use on American roads....

For those unfamiliar with greenroad - drivers have an overall score. You log onto the system by using your keyfob which the operator supplies. Poor driving is identified by the gyroscope triggering either an amber or a red light which is visible in the cab. Harsh braking/acceleration or throwing the bus around would trigger a buzzer and a light will come on in the display. So if you're on a country lane and get driven at by a fast car and you respond with an avoiding brake application, you'll get a red light! Management tend to set targets for drivers overall scores and in the past would offer financial incentives to get drivers to drive smoothly. Those have probably been done away with now.

In the company I worked at I was one of the better ones as it was unusual for me to get one red light or even an amber during my driving shifts.

 

[dodecahedron67]

With the introduction of in cab devices such as Greenroad and Mix telematics (RIBAS) poor driving standards are easily identified by management. If you drove a greenroad fitted vehicle in the manner described by the OP it would be triggering red lights all day long and that will affect the score - which will result in tea and biscuits with the management.

The same applies to fast driving - you'd get buzzed for harsh braking. These telematics systems seem to be standard on most bus and coach fleets now - and given the spreadsheet mentality applied by management these days a 'poor' score would be something very obvious to a desk bound manager. This would be backed up by the many CCTV cameras in modern buses - poor driving would be obvious and you'll benefit from the attention of the management.

There's a whole discussion to be had on the 'benefit' of these devices and why they might be inappropriate for use in the UK. They were designed for use on American roads....

For those unfamiliar with greenroad - drivers have an overall score. You log onto the system by using your keyfob which the operator supplies. Poor driving is identified by the gyroscope triggering either an amber or a red light which is visible in the cab. Harsh braking/acceleration or throwing the bus around would trigger a buzzer and a light will come on in the display. So if you're on a country lane and get driven at by a fast car and you respond with an avoiding brake application, you'll get a red light! Management tend to set targets for drivers overall scores and in the past would offer financial incentives to get drivers to drive smoothly. Those have probably been done away with now.

In the company I worked at I was one of the better ones as it was unusual for me to get one red light or even an amber during my driving shifts.

Greenroad is non-disciplinary at certain companies (and also a useless lump generally)

Financial incentives are still in use from time to time as well

 

[Gloster]

As a regular traveller on Southern Vectis I don’t find this happening very often. When it does happen it seems mostly to be newer drivers misjudging the location of a stop that has been requested: they then have to brake late and sharply to stop right at it. There was a time some years ago when one of the Enviro400, identifiable by having imitation wood planking floors (naff) and a double bell ring, seemed to catch drivers out as it braked differently to the rest of the fleet. Usually, any rough driving is caused by the bus driver underestimating just how stupid car drivers can be.

 

[M803UYA]

Greenroad is non-disciplinary at certain companies (and also a useless lump generally)

Financial incentives are still in use from time to time as well

Yes, some companies apply commonsense whereas others, well...... might be one more reason for their crippling staff shortage! I did say there's a whole discussion to be had on greenroad
Where I drive now no such tracking/telematics devices exist. The owner of the fleet doesn't believe in such things. He tends to trust his employees to do their jobs without being checked up upon. We know when to ring if we require assistance.

 

[BingMan]

When I've used High Peak (usually services 61 Glossop to Buxton and 58 Macclesfield to Chatsworth) I've noticed that the vehicle is quite rough, it probably doesn't help with the 61 only having four minutes layover at either end - surely the farting around at the mini roundabout outside of Whaley Bridge Tesco is one of the issues but that could be solved by simply not serving Tesco and instead stopping outside on the main road, the other is the sheer amount of bends especially through Fernilee. I'm sure some of the drivers may have visualisations that their doing the Lombard RAC Clumber Park or Chatsworth stages but I'm putting it down to the tight timetabling - the 58 timetable I simply cannot remember apart from it doesn't connect with the last 61 in Buxton on a Sunday.

It has always puzzled me that the Tesco roundabout is almost but not quite big enough for a bus to get round without having to reverse. Obviously designed by someone who has never seen a bus.
Stopping on the main road would subject passengers to a very difficult road crossing.

 

[dmncf]

It has always puzzled me that the Tesco roundabout is almost but not quite big enough for a bus to get round without having to reverse. Obviously designed by someone who has never seen a bus.
Stopping on the main road would subject passengers to a very difficult road crossing.

Taking a step back, there's much more wrong with the design of this out-of-town superstore. Why should buses be expected to do a 'double run' into and out of the store, increasing journey times for other passengers? A better design would have high quality bus stops on the main road, with a short pedestrian route to the store entrance (via a canal footbridge in this case).

 

[CBlue]

Greenroad is non-disciplinary at certain companies (and also a useless lump generally)

Financial incentives are still in use from time to time as well

Quite. When it was introduced at the local Stagecoach subsidiary it soon became clear that the score responses varied wildly between different vehicles. You could have chucked one of the darts off a cliff and it might have given an amber warning just before it hit the ground, conversely there was at least one 'decker that used to be constantly on the red even when running smoothly along a dual carriageway...

 

[Egg Centric]

Perceived smoothness is usually about the second derivative of velocity with respect to time (i.e. jerk) while these devices - including the cup of water - sound to me like they're measuring the first (i.e. acceleration).

As with car drivers, I find the majority of bus drivers do not meet "my standards" but said standards are probably elitist; certainly, they go way beyond what is required for safety or what most people seem to notice. Indeed crappy driving is one of the main reasons I dislike taking buses. There was one Polish bus driver in Cambridge about twenty years ago who had absolutely amazing vehicle control and consistently exceeded these standards so I know they are attainable.

 

[Geordie driver]

Perceived smoothness is usually about the second derivative of velocity with respect to time (i.e. jerk) while these devices - including the cup of water - sound to me like they're measuring the first (i.e. acceleration).

As with car drivers, I find the majority of bus drivers do not meet "my standards" but said standards are probably elitist; certainly, they go way beyond what is required for safety or what most people seem to notice. Indeed crappy driving is one of the main reasons I dislike taking buses. There was one Polish bus driver in Cambridge about twenty years ago who had absolutely amazing vehicle control and consistently exceeded these standards so I know they are attainable.

Good luck trying to tip a cup of water over using the acceleration on a 1965 Bristol Lodekka.

 

[heathrowrail]

It depends on the company; Stagecoach Devon and Western Greyhound used to be really good. First West of England is hit and miss; it depends on the driver and if the service is running late or not. Newbury & District always seem to drive like nutters due the timetable being so tight. I remember going on the 2 in Newbury last year and the driver of the double decker was going well over the speed limit down the road, to the point I felt the need to make an official complaint about it to the company; they just ignored it.

 

[richw]

Certain vehicles have very abrupt retarders. Nothing happening. Nothing happening, nothing happening, oh too heavy. I find solos the main culprit to lack smoothness.

 

[Titfield]

It depends on the company; Stagecoach Devon and Western Greyhound used to be really good. First West of England is hit and miss; it depends on the driver and if the service is running late or not. Newbury & District always seem to drive like nutters due the timetable being so tight. I remember going on the 2 in Newbury last year and the driver of the double decker was going well over the speed limit down the road, to the point I felt the need to make an official complaint about it to the company; they just ignored it.

How can you be sure he was going "well over" the speed limit?

 

[notadriver]

How can you be sure he was going "well over" the speed limit?

Google maps on android will display the speed and speed limit as will a lot of phone gps apps.

Is excessive speeding (more than 5 mph over the limit ) quite rare nowadays though ?

 

[richw]

Google maps on android will display the speed and speed limit as will a lot of phone gps apps.

Is excessive speeding (more than 5 mph over the limit ) quite rare nowadays though ?

Drive green has a speeding report now, and at FirstGroup at least it gets a “please explain” type conversation with management.

 

[90019]

Certain vehicles have very abrupt retarders. Nothing happening. Nothing happening, nothing happening, oh too heavy. I find solos the main culprit to lack smoothness.

Nothing... nothing... nothing... Oh hey, all the passengers have come and joined me at the front of the bus.

 

[heathrowrail]

How can you be sure he was going "well over" the speed limit?

The speed limit down the hill is 30mph, we were doing well over 30, probably 35-40mph, didn't even slow down at the zebra crossing.

 

[Eyersey468]

Certain vehicles have very abrupt retarders. Nothing happening. Nothing happening, nothing happening, oh too heavy. I find solos the main culprit to lack smoothness.

I found this as well, our 55 and 06 reg B7 Geminis were the worst for it, either nothing happened or the bus almost stood on its nose, there is no happy medium

 

[philthetube]

Good luck trying to tip a cup of water over using the acceleration on a 1965 Bristol Lodekka.

Good luck with it surviving a change from 1st to 2nd on a hill though, sure that would have got the red lights flashing.

 

[Geordie driver]

Good luck with it surviving a change from 1st to 2nd on a hill though, sure that would have got the red lights flashing.

Not the way I drove. ( Insert smiley here!) .

For some reason I assumed we would be driving these Bristol's in service, the reality was almost all semi or full auto, just the odd manual Bristol LH now and again.