HAIL (and ride)

So I was driving my favourite shift on Saturday. It's a rural duty and I'm out in the sticks on my own, with my meal break out there and the gap in service covered by another driver who does 1 round trip as part of his own shift. It is nice out here. People are much more pleasant and polite, though this is not our bread-and-butter work, unfortunately. We ply our trade in "shit-kicker" territory, as one of my friends would say.

But although people are much nicer out here, they're still thick.

I was travelling along a road with houses on the left and the speed limit is 40mph. I was travelling at 40mph and noticed a number of pedestrians on the path to the left, between my and the houses. Some were walking and some were conversing while stationary. Suddenly, one of these stationary conversers shoved their hand out to get me to stop. Instinctively I indicated to pull over and stopped.

I'd gone past them by about a bus length. There was no bus stop in this area, it is technically hail-and-ride - the term that fills bus drivers with dread as passengers simply cannot be trusted to stand in a safe location or to simply HAIL the bus.

All four of the stationary conversers headed towards the front of my bus. They all seemed pleasant enough, so I thought I'd start in the same manner:

"I don't suppose next time you could put your hand out a little earlier, could you?"

"We didn't think we needed to."

"You looked like you were just chatting or waiting to cross the road."

"No. We wanted to catch you. We even phoned the depot and they said it was hail and ride."

"Yes it is. But you need to put your arm out so that I know!"

"Oh right, we just thought you'd stop."

This group had done the right thing. They'd contacted my depot before travelling. They'd been correctly told that where they wanted to board has no fixed bus stops and so we employ hail and ride. Clearly no further discussion had taken place. These people had no idea what hail and ride meant. They didn't seem thick or particularly under-class. I issued them their tickets and they sat down.

As I drove on, I couldn't help thinking to myself what they must have thought when the depot told them it was hail and ride. All I could imagine is that they assumed it meant the bus driver would stop for anyone who was motionless on the path. If that was the case, I'd be stopping everywhere.

Common Sense Solution: Make hail-and-ride sections of route ILLEGAL. Local authorities should refuse to accept registration documents for tendered services that have hail and ride sections. Local authorities are equally at fault as many are responsible for bus stop infrastructure in their area and can't be arsed to splash out a few quid for bus stop flags and timetable cases. You don't have this attitude in the railways. Nor do you have this attitude in the large urban areas. That's where the money is so all parties actually give a toss.