Stroller logic puzzle
This happened when my daughter was about 2 and a half. We were taking the bus home, I forget from where, and the only seat was toward the back. So I folded up the stroller, stuck it under the seat, and put her on my lap. Getting off the side door of a bus with a stroller is a bit of a logic puzzle, and I decided the best and safest thing was to toss the stroller onto the sidewalk and then grab the toddler, rather than the other way around.
So I tell her, at our stop, to stand there, Mama will get you in a second. She’s standing at the top of the stairs, I toss the stroller and all of our stuff onto the pavement–three seconds at most–but when I turn back to grab her the bus driver closes the door and starts to pull away from the curb!
I’m pounding on the door, running alongside, yelling, and every single rider on the bus screams for the driver to stop. The doors open again and I grab my daughter, white-faced and wide eyed but otherwise OK, and I hear several people chewing out the driver for not waiting for me. That would have been a very bad day if not for my fellow riders. So thank you, whoever you were.
Dec 12th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Oh yes, I remember, I was a teenhood.. I ride on the older red articaluated bus on old #8 North (Currently #22), their mother got off the bus left the toddler behind, as driver closes door and toddler stand on the door steps. I yelled at bus driver “WHOA! EMERGENCY STOP!” the driver saw a toddler stand on the step near the door, a driver waits for their mother to be pick the toddler up at the door whew!
Driver should have look at the door for clear before being pulled away.
Dec 12th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
One tip… if you are exiting through the back door of a regular bus (that is, one in which you have to push the back door open yourself, although the driver unlatches it), if you can, keep holding the door open until you and everything/everyone else you are taking off the bus are safely off the bus. Having the door open engages something called brake-door interlock, which is a safety measure that is supposed to prevent the bus from moving if the back door is open. That safety feature *doesn’t* always work, so be cautious. However, having the door open also makes it more likely that the driver will notice that you are not all the way off the bus yet.
I always preferred (and some systems make it a policy) that customers with small children exit through the front door whenever possible. Sometimes, depending on the mirror setup of the particular bus, it can be difficult to see everything in the back stairwell, and it is *especially* easy to miss a small child.
Passengers, if you are sitting near the front of the bus in one of the side-facing seats, it is courteous to allow someone with small children to occupy those seats, just as you would for an elderly or disabled passenger.
Dec 15th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Thank you, Andrew, as a driver, I know all to well how hard ot can be to see the back stair well clearly. Mirrors are back there, but people do bump them during a run, and until I get to the next time piont/layover, I feel uneasy about the back door until I can re adjust the mirror.