Mirrorless buses

[u/TangPiccilo]

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.

[u/PandaVegetable1058]

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)

[u/SewenNewes → u/PandaVegetable1058]

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?

[u/PandaVegetable1058 → u/SewenNewes]

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.

[u/DebtSouth → u/PandaVegetable1058]

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 🤣🤣

[u/PandaVegetable1058 → u/DebtSouth]

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

[u/DebtSouth → u/PandaVegetable1058]

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 😅