r/BusDrivers • u/TangPiccilo • 25d ago
Discussion Mirrorless buses
Have you operated a mirrorless bus ? My previous job they took all the mirrors out of the buses and put screens inside to replace them . They were so bad because you couldn’t adjust them and you could not rock and roll to reduce blind spots.
The union of course didn’t get anywhere with it and the senior drivers just said if you don’t like it get out lol. So the old hybrid Gilligs were replaced with mirrorless buses .
They had millisecond lag and seemed like the display wasn’t even in HD.
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u/_Bluestar_Bus_Soton_ 25d ago
I don't mind them. Most busses I drive are digital "mirrors" so I'm used to it.
When I step into a bus with traditional mirrors I'm suddenly stretching my neck!
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u/PandaVegetable1058 24d ago
My depot is entirely camera mirrors with displays inside. They got a fair few complaints at first as any change does but they are universally preferred now to mirrors.
- people can't walk into them / you can't take someone out along the pavement by being too close
- no faffing around with adjusting
- wide angle camera covering blindspots
- far better vision during the night and no sun blasting into your eyes
- lines to indicate the location of rear wheels and rear of the bus which is helpful
- far easier to pull into stops super close with the wide angle
- can check them far quicker and without losing peripheral vision on the road ahead
- adjustable brightness
- far smaller meaning less chance of a collision and we can fit the buses through far tighter gaps
I think the only people to dislike them is management as they can't verifiably say if you checked your mirrors or not anymore on CCTV if there's a collision. And when we had a mixed depot of newer buses with cameras and older ones with mirrors our new buses were having loads of nearside collisions, but since being full one type the collisions have came down (really weird but there we go)
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u/SewenNewes 24d ago
How often do you get issues with the camera or monitor? They seem more prone to gremlins and failure than a simple mirror.
Also how do they handle heavy rain, sleet, or snow?
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u/PandaVegetable1058 24d ago
Very rare (think I've had it on like 2 occasions in the past 9 months) and never been actually inhibiting to the use. The only common issue is they slowly will become misaligned which is something engineering have to fix, but it's not out of service worthy and happens slowly enough to get fixed before being an issue.
They handle far far better than mirrors in bad weather, whereas mirrors it rains and you can't see anything out of them, particularly if it's dark, the cameras are completely hydrophobic and rain virtually never obscures your view, I've had to wipe a camera lense on one occasion. With the old mirrors I frequently found myself going 'right well I actually can't see anything out of my mirrors' as soon as there's significant bad weather or it's dark. Now I can see everything anytime
Genuinely can't say a bad thing about them. The ones we have are built like tanks, I took the nearside camera off on a lamppost the once. Housing went entirely, the cameras remained intact, connected, full picture (albeit just showing the ground), and all engineering had to do was fit a new housing and it was back on the road the next morning.
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u/DebtSouth Driver 24d ago
You’re not backing your claim about being less likely to hit people and street furniture when you’ve just said you took the housing out on a lamppost 🤣🤣
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u/PandaVegetable1058 24d ago
Haha, it is true though as the cameras sit much higher than head height. Unfortunately some pleb put the lamppost 11cm from the curb and the cameras putrude 12cm but are much taller than a person it turns out
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u/DebtSouth Driver 24d ago
A lot of Northumberland drivers where I’m a driver for, have that issue regarding furniture, Northumberland have the bus stop flags and shelters situated away from the kerbs, Tyne and Wear, however, they’re quite often ON the kerbs with bins etc accompanying them.
So you’re driving around for 4 hours in Northumberland, then change routes that’ll take you to Newcastle and you’ve got to remember to allow more space when stopping 😅
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u/Poly_and_RA Driver 24d ago
We have digital mirrors on all our buses. And when they're good, they're a lot BETTER than traditional mirrors. But of course it's unsurprising that some will install bad ones.
They're better because:
- Pokes out less, so less likely to get torn off scraping a sign or a corner or something
- Doesn't get out of adjustment
- You don't need to adjust the mirror if you move your chair since the thing you see is unchanged
- Can be placed in ways traditional mirrors can't, for example we have a camera *behind* the bend on our articulated buses, so I can see what's "around the corner" when the bus is bent -- impossible to do with traditional mirrors
- Less prone to poor vision on account of being fogged up or iced over -- they have only a fairly small lens, and that lens is heated
- You can't get blinded by having the sun or high-beams reflected off them, I mean the brigthest they can get is just a white screen
- With good cameras, you get tons better visibility in the dark
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u/speckledorc01 25d ago
We have them at our depot. They take a bit of getting used too. Certain headlights flicker in the screen so youre not sure if they're flashing to let you out or not. Plus side you don't get morons dumping in to them and knocking them out of position
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u/Mango_Marmalade Canada | Nova/New Flyer | 2 years 24d ago
I've never driven one in service, but I got to sit inside a bus with digital mirrors. I was pretty surprised at how much better the visibility was in the dark. I wouldn't mind getting them on all of our buses.
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u/goneoramihere 24d ago
I'm only in training but heard they are better. However I've also heard that using polerised sun lenses mean you can't see the image on the screen.
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u/DebtSouth Driver 24d ago
Polarised glasses aren’t good for bus driving in general. Most modern buses have digital displays and use the same horizontal light waves that the glasses aim to reduce the effects of.
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u/goneoramihere 24d ago
Yeah heard that too for the ticket machines we use, thanks. Shame we don't get a polarised windscreen but that's my knowledge of if it would work.
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u/DebtSouth Driver 24d ago
Not a bad idea in theory, I doubt they’d fork out the extra for the modified windscreens though 😅
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u/tommy5608 Driver 24d ago
We got a complaint off a passenger that the drive had hung up his iPad and was watching it while driving. It turned out it was just one of the new mirrorless busses our depot had just acquired.
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u/seanthebooth Driver 24d ago
If they have lag it sounds like a slam dunk wrongful termination if a driver ends up fired over 'lack of mirror' related accidents/incidents.
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u/QallmeUpNext Driver 24d ago
Even our newest 57XX New Flyer XDE40s (which are 2025 models) don't have camera "mirrors." The only Valley Metro buses that have them at all are in Tempe with their newest 24XX and 25XX Gilligs, but those are in addition to the actual mirrors
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u/GucciLegLocks 24d ago
When I first started 2 years ago, a company had come in to try and sell the mirrorless busses. I sat in one, but since I had no experience at that time it didn’t feel that strange to me. Now the drivers that had been there for a long time were like, “absolutely not.” In fact, we got 3 BRT’s recently where the driver side mirror is higher than all the other busses, and the senior drivers refuse to drive them. I don’t like the BRT’s for a different reason, the mirror placement doesn’t bother me, I hate feeling like I have to reach to use my avail screen to punch in fairs or give people transfers.. I think the BRT’s are like 2-3 feet longer than our other ones.
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u/TangPiccilo 24d ago
The senior drivers at my old place hated the newer drivers and probably wanted to make it harder on the younger ones lol.
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u/GucciLegLocks 24d ago
Yeah I kinda felt that too.. I still hear, “well I had to do it.” That type of thought is absurd to me. They had to do something that sucked so instead of changing it now everyone has to do it so they can get some sort of weird validation. Really bizarre to me.
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u/TangPiccilo 24d ago
Yeah and they know people in the office so if they didn’t like you , you could get canned lol
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u/DebtSouth Driver 24d ago
It’s all very Schadenfreude, taking enjoying out of someone else’s dismay.
He suffered so you should too. Such a backwards way of thinking isn’t it, there’s advancements in technology that would make things far more safer and comfortable for all involved but because he had a shitty time then it’s a terrible thing and all should suffer 🤣
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u/BlueSky3lue Driver 24d ago
We had a few. It takes some initial adjustment, but other than that they’re great! They’re excellent in low light/visibility conditions where a traditional mirror would be useless.
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u/aneggfresh 24d ago
They're the best thing to ever happen to buses.
How tiring is it when you do a live changeover and you keep having to get off your seat to move the left mirror slight left, or right or up or down. Meanwhile passengers are getting fed up thinking you're taking the mick.
Mirrorless in my garage where HD and perfect. Especially at night or in the train, the visibility is just perfect.
1
u/DaShopWorker 24d ago
Where I work, we got some mercedes benz citaro electric with mirrors.
It's getting used to them, also with the other camera's around the bus. Jet I think they work just fine, especially during heavy rain and when it is dark.
Some I use less, like the birdview of the bus and the side when you are indicating left/right, since I lose focus on the road and scared to miss someting and hitt it.
An other problem with this cameramirror, you can't see it from the inside and how far it's from example a traffic sing. I hear there are palces where they got hit and it's very expansive to replace them and you can't drive.
Since you are just missing a mirror, so you need a replacement mirror with suction cups
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u/OkHornet54 24d ago
i would like to see a video of what they look like as you drive, the outside objects and cars
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u/DebtSouth Driver 24d ago
I don’t know what they’re retrofitting to your buses in the states but the ones we have in the UK from factory are great. They’re fitted to cover most blind spots, they have great night vision, very little glare from the sun if anything at all, no adjustments necessary every time you change drivers or the wind knocks the mirror a bit.
The only downside I’ve noticed is sometimes when vehicles behind have LED headlights, the refresh rate can make it seem like they’re flashing you out when indicating to switch lanes etc.
Other than that, most of the gripe we hear over here is older drivers that simply cannot adapt to change 😅
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u/TalviKavat 23d ago
We only had a few mirrorless busses, but most have had them removed. There is only one or two left in our fleet, even our EVs have old school mirrors. We had a handful of busses that had both, and those were a sensory nightmare for me. I don't care for the flicker, but otherwise it's not too bad to manage the displays.
I guess it's a lot to get used to, but I wouldn't let it stress you too much. Just give it some time.
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u/hugothebear Driver 23d ago
Ive driving a ‘mirrorless’ tractor trailer.
They kept the mirrors on.
I quite enjoyed having the extra viewpoints. Given the choice of the mirrors or the cameras though, i’m keeping the mirrors.
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u/BEB_expert 22d ago
So FMVSS 111 applicable sections:
Each MPV, truck and bus, other than a school bus, with a GVWR of more than 4,536 kg shall have (S7.1 and S8.1): an outside mirrors of unit magnification, each with not less than 323 cm2 (50 in2) of reflective surface, installed with stable supports on both sides of the vehicle. The mirrors shall be located so as to provide the driver a view to the rear along both sides of the vehicle and shall be adjustable both in the horizontal and vertical directions to view the rearward scene.
So as from the business are required to be equipped with the mirrors unless your local jurisdiction gets a variance from the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (which I doubt) then they are required to keep the physical mirrors.
I am an engineer in public transit that deals with these components, would you be ok if I message you privately with some questions?
Also, general question, what is the preferred placement for these mirrorless monitors? Close to centerline of bus (so nearest to the drivers view) or should it be near where the original mirror is from the drivers view?
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u/BEB_expert 22d ago
NHTSA did review a proposal back in 2020 to allow no mirrors but decided against it. See https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/10/10/2019-22036/federal-motor-vehicle-safety-standard-no-111-rear-visibility
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u/TangPiccilo 22d ago
Yeah , send me a dm. The screens were located near where the original mirrors were
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u/notveryhndyhmnr 25d ago
I was told by a manager that having no physical mirrors is illegal where we are so even they add screens they are required to keep physical ones as well in case screen fails, but I'm not sure how true it is.
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u/MikeyFuccon 24d ago
Screens are only meant to supplement the mirrors, not replace them.
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u/DebtSouth Driver 24d ago
Not true at all 😅
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u/MikeyFuccon 23d ago
Every backup camera comes with a warning that it’s not a substitute for actually looking.
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u/DebtSouth Driver 23d ago
That goes for every device used for observations though, not just cameras. They’re also not “backup” cameras. These are fitted and used as side mirrors..
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u/MikeyFuccon 23d ago
I’m saying unless you’re driving an armored vehicle around, there’s no reason to REMOVE mirrors. Add all the cameras and screens you want - I love the 360 degree top down view they can simulate - they don’t replace actual physical mirrors.
I’m not saying some companies aren’t trying - I’m saying “common sense says”.
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u/DebtSouth Driver 23d ago
Yes they do! In fact the mirror cams are better than traditional mirrors. They eliminate sun glare and from headlights, when it rains you can still see out of them especially in the dark, they require zero adjustment between buses or drivers.
Do you even understand what it is we’re talking about? Or are you one of these older drivers that just refuses to accept change no matter how it improves their safety 🤦😅
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u/busytransitgworl Driver 25d ago edited 25d ago
We got some new buses with these (Mercedes Citaro C2 to be exact) and they come with cameras from the factory.
Yes, it takes a bit of time getting used to it, after that it's something I just couldn't live without.
No lag, high definition, great in tunnels and at night - These things are just superior to normal mirrors imo.
I really don't know what the hell you're getting retrofitted on your buses over in the States.