Open Bus Doors; Coroner’s Rider

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29952, 13 October 1962, Page 12

Open Bus Doors; Coroner’s Rider

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, October 12.

A rider that exit doors of a bus or other passenger vehicle should not be opened while the vehicle is still in motion was added by the Coroner (Mr P. Keesing) to his verdict at an inauest in Wellington today.

The Coroner was inquiring into the death of Barbara Winifred Scott, aged 17, who was run over after alighting at the rear door of a Wellington City Council bus on July 23. The driver, Robert Thompson, said the bus was almost on the stop when the buzzer sounded and he had to pull up past the stop, but did not brake sharply. He felt a bump before the bus stopped and got out to see what had caused it. He found the girl lying behind the bus. Her head was crushed. He said he opened the door about two seconds before the bump, but did not look to see who was getting off. It was common practice in Wellington for the doors to be opened while the bus was still in motion. Charles John Albert Hazeltine, a bus driver, who was a passenger in the bus. also described the driver's actions before and after stopping. Answering the Coroner, he said the custom was to have the doors fully opened just as the bus came to a standstill. Counsel for the City Council, Mr R. G. M. MacGoun. said the doors of the bus complied with the Passenger Service Construction Regulations, 1954, and he could find nothing in any regulation or act which prescribed a code of conduct for the operation of rear exit doors.

No doubt the safest procedure would be to keep the doors closed until a bus had stopped, but a balance had to be kept between that extreme and the expeditious conduct of the service. The procedure described by Mr Hazeltine was a commonsense one. 'He was reliably informed that this was the first accident of its kind. To alter pie procedure would be a momentous task.

The Coroner said that before this accident he had seen elderly persons and

others waiting to alight with the doors open and the bus still moving and had thought it was dangerous. Mr MacGoun replied that adequate handgrips were also provided, and that if it was being suggested that the opening of the door was an invitation to alight, he would say that any passenger with normal faculties would know when a bus was moving.

The Coroner said the evidence had not established whether the girl stepped off the bus or fell, but it was moving when she left it. She must have left it almost immediately the doors opened. Opening the doors, as Mr Hazeltine had described, was more dangerous than having no doors at all, as was the case with some trams, because a passenger might take the opening of the doors as a cue to alight, either through lack of observation or absent-mindedness. He would add a rider to his verdict to do what he could in his official position to stop the practice.

He found that Miss Scott died of head injuries received when she stepped or fell from the bus near its stopping place and then fell under a rear wheel.