Pressing the bell on buses, London v Outside

[pethadine82]

I had a very strange experience the last few weeks using buses in London, having not used one in 20 years. I thought it was customary to press the bell once.
Maybe it's London and and people not understanding the system, but the constant double / triple / quadruple pressing of the bell is absolutely not necessary.
Does this happen in other parts of the UK?

 

[GusB]

I had a very strange experience the last few weeks using buses in London, having not used one in 20 years. I thought it was customary to press the bell once.
Maybe it's London and and people not understanding the system, but the constant double / triple / quadruple pressing of the bell is absolutely not necessary.
Does this happen in other parts of the UK?

It could be the following:

• Multiple people pressing the bell for the same stop in a short period of time
• Some buses ping more than once when the button is pressed

It's not just London, either.

 

[lxfe_mxtterz]

I've certainly noticed this. Not to say it doesn't happen elsewhere, but I find the "custom" (or misunderstanding) of constantly spamming the bell to drive everyone insane is particularly prevalent in London.

To be fair with you, the whole experience of using London buses can be rather strange if you're not used to it. The practice of shuffling as close to the edge of the pavement as soon as one sees the bus is approaching, followed by the mad scrum through the front doors to see who can beep their card on the reader first...

Was certainly a bit of a culture shock the first time I started using London buses.

 

[Gloster]

On the Isle of Wight it is quite common for somebody to press it once so that it buzzes and the ‘Bus stopping’ indicator lights up, only for somebody else to push it again, and occasionally a third... I think it is just lack of observation: certainly, some people don’t seem to associate the buzz and the light with the bell having been pushed, or they just don’t notice.

Other than kids messing about one person pushing more than once is not common. Some years ago the bus was approaching what is now my stop when an old man pressed the bell and then started to stand up. His wife then said, “Push it again, there’s two of us.”

 

[robvulpes]

There has been a longstanding issue in my bit of suburban London (TfL buses) where if the driver pushes the 'shut' button for the exit door (dual-door buses) before the door has fully opened (perfectly feasible if just one agile person is alighting) the "bus stopping" sign doesn't go out in the saloon (but apparently does on the dashboard). People who trust the sign then get taken past their stop and complain. So people try to make sure the bus will stop by pressing the bell regardless of whether the sign is illuminated or not, resulting in multiple rings.

 

[busestrains]

I think people these days are just too busy listening to music or speaking on their phone or texting on their phone or watching videos on their phone etc etc etc that they do not hear or see the bell being pressed. So as a result people just automatically press it when they approach their stop without realising that it has already been pressed. I certainly see this a lot on buses. Some occasions you can even get the bell pressed ten times for the same stop. It is ridiculous.

 

[The exile]

Just another symptom of the “I bury myself in my phone, completely ignore what’s going on around me - but woe betide the world if I don’t get what I want” that is all too prevalent…

 

[londonbridge]

I use TFL X26 a fair bit, which many members will know is limited stop, the longer distance between stops means more opportunities for the bell to be rung multiple times, I think my record is something like at least two dozen rings between two stops.

 

[scosutsut]

I could be mistaken, but I think Borders Buses 69 plate Enviro 200 MMCs double chime on the first press of the bell, and then don't chime at all regardless of how often they are then pressed again until after the requested stop.

Which is bliss.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I had a very strange experience the last few weeks using buses in London, having not used one in 20 years. I thought it was customary to press the bell once.
Maybe it's London and and people not understanding the system, but the constant double / triple / quadruple pressing of the bell is absolutely not necessary.
Does this happen in other parts of the UK?

What I find most annoying is some new buses where you press the bell once and get "ding ding, ding ding" like an EMU being belled off. Was it that? Other than that often each person presses it themselves.

 

[HullRailMan]

I took it to an example of the individual bubble that many people in London seem to occupy. An inability to respect a queue at the bus stop is another example.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I took it to an example of the individual bubble that many people in London seem to occupy. An inability to respect a queue at the bus stop is another example.

I actually find that people are more likely to queue for buses in London, even if it is a virtual queue of the kind found in a barber's shop or bar which is only in peoples' minds. Probably depends where you are, though, London probably plays host to the widest demographics of bus users in the UK.

 

[Geordie driver]

A good bus is one where, once the bell has been rung, it will no longer ring.

There is usually a light in the cab to show the driver a stop has been requested.

At one time repeated ringing meant an emergency stop. Private hires were a pain, people who haven't used a bus in years think it's funny to repeatedly ring the bell.

Some people would ring the bell too soon, then sit there like a plank instead of saying sorry, I meant the next stop.

Some people would wait until you are 3 yards from the stop doing 50mph then ring it and ask why you didn't stop.

 

[busestrains]

What I find most annoying is some new buses where you press the bell once and get "ding ding, ding ding" like an EMU being belled off. Was it that? Other than that often each person presses it themselves.

That is just the E200MMC and E400MMC buses that do that. However these two types are probably the most common buses in use these days. I have no idea why they thought they needed four rings instead of one.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A good bus is one where, once the bell has been rung, it will no longer ring.

There is certainly one stop I used to frequently use in Milton Keynes just off a roundabout, where if you didn't ring twice - once before the roundabout and once just after - the stop would almost certainly be missed. Ring only before and the driver would forget due to the attention needed at the roundabout, ring only after and they'd accelerate too hard off the roundabout and not slow in time. So in short no

 

[danm14]

Does this happen in other parts of the UK?

In Belfast, in my experience, many drivers seem oblivious to the existence of an upper deck, and if there's no obvious movement on the lower deck on approach to the stop, the driver will assume the bell was rung in error unless it has been rung multiple times.

My record for distance overcarried was half a mile, which I had to walk back (uphill) in driving rain. Since then, I will generally ring the bell at least twice in Belfast if nobody else is ringing it and I'm sitting upstairs.

 

[Glasgowbusguy]

I could be mistaken, but I think Borders Buses 69 plate Enviro 200 MMCs double chime on the first press of the bell, and then don't chime at all regardless of how often they are then pressed again until after the requested stop.

Which is bliss.

I think Lothian have the same set up on pretty much all of their fleet.

 

[WY Bus Spotter]

.

 

[BenS123]

What I find most annoying is some new buses where you press the bell once and get "ding ding, ding ding" like an EMU being belled off.

Morebus' E400MMC fleet does this - although it isn't the same bell noise 4 times, the bell just plays a 4 note melody

Yellow Coaches' fleet of double deckers bought from Arriva London don't have "Bus Stopping" screens (as iBus was taken out but nothing put in its place) so the bells do get spammed

 

[KeithC]

.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Morebus' E400MMC fleet does this - although it isn't the same bell noise 4 times, the bell just plays a 4 note melody

Yellow Coaches' fleet of double deckers bought from Arriva London don't have "Bus Stopping" screens (as iBus was taken out but nothing put in its place) so the bells do get spammed

Nothing can be as annoying as the "bus stopping at next bus stop, please stand clear of doors" announcement you briefly got on one London bus type a while back, instead of a simple "ding".

 

[TAS]

I remember an incident shortly after my First-run school service was withdrawn and replaced by being incorporated into a much longer, very rural school service run by an independent. The driver, looking puzzled, turned to his manager, who was showing him the new route, and asked why people were ringing the bell. The manager's response was something along the lines of "with First, if you don't ring the bell, the bus won't stop". I guess the usual custom with their passengers was just to ask the driver to stop (many of their rural stops weren't marked with flags or anything, so I guess there was a certain amount of flexibility about where the bus would stop), but we kept using the bell (the stops in our village were well marked on the side of the road the bus dropped us off at on the way home, though not on the side it picked up).

 

[gmaguire]

You also get the the idiots in my neck of the woods on a service terminating in Wakefield Bus Station who press the bell when the bus is pulling into the bus station, it obviously hasn't dawned on the dimwits that it is going to stop anyway as it's the terminus

I was once on the 185 in London approaching the last stop in Lewisham. I was the only passenger and I didn't press the bell thinking the driver would stop, but he drove right past it, turned off the saloon lights, and for a moment it looked like I was going back to Camberwell garage with him! When I emerged from the back and said "I hope you haven't forgotten about me" I think it made him jump a bit. He said I should've pressed the bell, I said I didn't think I had to.

Then it happened again on the 468 at the Elephant, and I'm pretty sure it was the same driver.

Nothing can be as annoying as the "bus stopping at next bus stop, please stand clear of doors" announcement you briefly got on one London bus type a while back, instead of a simple "ding".

I think that was on the 51 reg PVLs and EVLs in Go-Ahead's fleet, maybe the WVLs too, and it may have been in addition to the bell.

 

[lxfe_mxtterz]

I was once on the 185 in London approaching the last stop in Lewisham. I was the only passenger and I didn't press the bell thinking the driver would stop, but he drove right past it, turned off the saloon lights, and for a moment it looked like I was going back to Camberwell garage with him! When I emerged from the back and said "I hope you haven't forgotten about me" I think it made him jump a bit. He said I should've pressed the bell, I said I didn't think I had to.

That reminds me, I had a very similar experience on the 406 towards Epsom. I was the only passenger and I didn't press the bell for Epsom High Street, the last stop, thinking - as you did - that the driver would stop anyway.

Alas, we didn't and I soon found myself in a bus layover a bit of walk away from the bus stop, climbing down the stairs with all the lights turned off to face a rather surly driver who gave me a bit of a earful about how the bus "doesn't terminate at the Clock Tower"...

 

[Trackman]

There is certainly one stop I used to frequently use in Milton Keynes just off a roundabout, where if you didn't ring twice - once before the roundabout and once just after - the stop would almost certainly be missed. Ring only before and the driver would forget due to the attention needed at the roundabout, ring only after and they'd accelerate too hard off the roundabout and not slow in time. So in short no

Similar thing in my experience, once the driver is clear of something tricky then ring the bell - with about 10 seconds or less to go.

I was once on the 185 in London approaching the last stop in Lewisham. I was the only passenger and I didn't press the bell thinking the driver would stop, but he drove right past it, turned off the saloon lights, and for a moment it looked like I was going back to Camberwell garage with him!

I know someone who this happened to but not in Lewisham and ended up in a depot!

 

[GusB]

You also get the the idiots in my neck of the woods on a service terminating in Wakefield Bus Station who press the bell when the bus is pulling into the bus station, it obviously hasn't dawned on the dimwits that it is going to stop anyway as it's the terminus

That's surely just habit, though. You get to the point where you wish to get off and instinctively you press the bell. It's a bit harsh to be calling people "dimwits".

 

[Rick1984]

Growing up using Western Scottish you never pressed the bell. I don't think it became common place until the Volvo B6 became predominant.

I thought the 4 ding bell was just designed to be whimsical! Like an old fashioned bell

 

[GusB]

Growing up using Western Scottish you never pressed the bell. I don't think it became common place until the Volvo B6 became predominant.

I thought the 4 ding bell was just designed to be whimsical! Like an old fashioned bell

It was the same in Northern Scottish territory too - anyone who used the bell was looked upon as if they had two heads! The bell-push was a rubber strip that ran along the ceiling of the bus, and it made a pathetic "meh" sound when pressed. In those days you only ever had to ring the bell in the Cities where they had two doors!

 

[FOH]

The other thing with London is passengers pressing the bell a nano second after moving off from the previous stop

 

[route101]

I find it more rude when someone does not use the bell and expects to be let off.