Yesterday, while I was hanging out in line with a friend and other freezing passengers about to board a Megabus from New York to Boston, people passed the time sharing stories of many intercity bus transport failures. Examples:
— Tires blown. One bus kept going until passengers in mutiny got the driver to stop.
— A bus with a blown tire that still had enough other tires to finish carrying it the last mile to its destination, but instead had to sit while a car with a mechanic dispatched from headquarters came out, an hour later, to inspect the bus and say it was okay to proceed.
— A bus that jammed under a railroad trestle while the driver was lecturing a trainee on best practices. (One of my stories.)
— A bus that caught fire.
— A bus driver who had no navigation instrument to help when a traffic jam forced the bus onto surface streets, so a passenger with a phone and a map app (my wife in this case) stepped up to co-pilot the bus, getting cheers from the rest of the passengers when the bus finally arrived.
Now our son is in a failed bus from Ohio to New York, waiting for a replacement to arrive at a rest stop.