Get A Brain, Morans

"PS9" (PS9) 01/25/2015 at 10:14 • Filed to: None

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Everyone knows how the bus system works, right? You wait at a stop, the bus approaches, you read the giant neon sign at the top telling you where it's going and you get on or not based on that information. This is something everyone knows. Even children can do it. It's not hard.

Just in case you don't know and are not familiar with the area, the bus company prints out maps and places them on the bus free of charge. There are at least 25-50 of theses on any given bus, so there are thousands circulating around out there every day. But you don't need to wait for a bus to show up to get a map, you can !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Oh look; someone at this company went through the trouble of culling out 90% of all non-bus related information. This map is so easy a caveman child could read it and figure out where to go using the bus system. So it should be impossible for someone to get on the wrong bus and realize that before it's too late, right? Right?

WRONG. Dude gets on the express bus. Dude notices that the bus is passing every single stop. Then dude becomes angry at the driver for doing his fucking job. "THIS IS ILLEGAL! YOU CAN'T KEEP ME ON THIS BUS YOU HAVE TO STOP!!! I'LL HAVE YOU FIRED!!!" Then after not getting his way there, dude notices I'm browsing oppo on my phone and the following conversation occurs.

Dude: I need to use your phone to call the police. I'm being hijacked.
Me: No you aren't. No one is hijacking anything.
Dude: But the bus driver is passing every stop!
Me: What did the giant sign on the front of the bus say when you got on it?
Dude: ...? I don't know, what does that have to do with anything?!
Me: It tells you what kind of bus this is and where it goes. If you had read it, you wouldn't be surprised about not being able to get off at every other stop.
Dude: He's not allowed to keep me on the bus if I don't want to be like this!
Me: He's also not allowed to stop wherever he feels like it. The driver is required to keep going until he reaches a designated stop relative to the route. None of those stops are on this busses route.
Dude: But he didn't tell me any of that when I got on...
Me: Did you ask?

Dude retreats to his seat to wait for the appropriate stop, mumbling about having the driver arrested if he didn't let him out there, and leaves at the stop. He didn't take a map with him.

nafsucof > PS9 01/25/2015 at 10:19

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it's moron. And yes he was a moron. He had no phone eh?

PS9 > nafsucof 01/25/2015 at 10:20

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I assume you've never seen this sign before.

nafsucof > PS9 01/25/2015 at 10:21

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haha no. That's great.

BmanUltima's car still hasn't been fixed yet, he'll get on it tomorrow, honest. > PS9 01/25/2015 at 10:21

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I have gotten on the wrong bus before, but that was my fault, not the driver's.

PatBateman > PS9 01/25/2015 at 10:22

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But HE WAS BEING HIJACKED!!!!

PS9 > PatBateman 01/25/2015 at 10:25

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SPNKiX > BmanUltima's car still hasn't been fixed yet, he'll get on it tomorrow, honest. 01/25/2015 at 10:27

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Whatever. It's always the drivers fault.

davedave1111 > PS9 01/25/2015 at 10:41

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He's a moron, but I have a feeling that he was correct about being unlawfully detained - or would have been here in England under our laws, anyway. Then again, the bus driver could reasonably argue that the idiot had consented to the treatment by getting on an express bus.

The bus driver probably should have stopped and let him off if there was anywhere safe to do so, though. There's no need to be a dick about it if someone got on the wrong bus.

PS9 > davedave1111 01/25/2015 at 10:44

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Nope. The laws here in the US support the driver. And he wasn't being a dick; you can lose your job for dropping people off at non-express stops while driving the express bus. It's the passengers responsibility to know where the bus they are taking is going, and the company does everything within it's power to make that easy to do. If children can do it - and they do - than a grown adult too lazy to read the signs and maps has no excuse.

davedave1111 > PS9 01/25/2015 at 11:53

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"The laws here in the US support the driver."

Well, it would be specific state law, wouldn't it? But I imagine it's pretty similar to English law, and so it is an offence, but one with an applicable defence too.

"And he wasn't being a dick; you can lose your job for dropping people off at non-express stops while driving the express bus."

Fair enough, if that's the policy.

"If children can do it - and they do - than a grown adult too lazy to read the signs and maps has no excuse."

I quite agree, but apart from that policy it strikes me as simpler just to let idiots off the bus if it's no skin off anyone's nose. I was assuming that the bus would pull up, open the doors, let him off, close the doors, drive off - 30 seconds. Come to think of it, though, it probably takes another five minutes to explain to all the other idiots why they can't get on.

PS9 > davedave1111 01/25/2015 at 13:08

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But I imagine it's pretty similar to English law

Why would it be, given that Florida is not governed by the UK?

it strikes me as simpler just to let idiots off the bus if it's no skin off anyone's nose.

But it's skin off EVERYONES nose. If you let one person off whenever they want just because they're being a loud ignorant disagreeable asshole a special snowflake, then all the other snowflakes who don't want to follow the rules will wonder why they can't also get off whenever they want. If people at the stop see the bus there, they'll wonder how come they can't get on, even though the sign doesn't say 'GARAGE' or 'DROP OFF ONLY'. If the express bus has to stop at all the other stops the normal bus does...it's not any faster than the normal bus anymore, which is a big deal, because the alternative ads 1 hr minimum to the trip. The entire point of the express bus is to get from one point to the other faster than you would have otherwise.

All because one person didn't want to grab a pamphlet map and open it, an action that takes less than 30 seconds, and is free.

ranwhenparked > PS9 01/25/2015 at 15:25

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"Why would it be, given that Florida is not governed by the UK?"

Because most of the United States, outside Louisiana, bases its legal system on English Common Law and a lot of it is pretty much exactly the same, though interpretations have diverged in many cases over the years.

davedave1111 > PS9 01/25/2015 at 15:40

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"Why would it be, given that Florida is not governed by the UK?"

What ranwhenparked said. But also because what a lot of Americans don't quite get is that the reason you seceded wasn't that you didn't like English ideals, but that the founding fathers felt that England wasn't living up to them strongly enough. Your whole basis in that regard is being more English than the English, so you take common law principles like personal liberty very seriously for the same reasons we do.

As for stopping to let idiots off, my initial thought was that this would be a rare occurrence, in which case, might as well. On second thoughts I think you're quite right and there are way too many self-entitled idiots out there.

PS9 > ranwhenparked 01/25/2015 at 15:47

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That was 200+ years ago. We haven't been copy-pasting every tiny piece of UK legislation word for word since then, and there aren't any in Florida regarding letting entitled gits get off the bus whether or not it is their time to do so.

ranwhenparked > PS9 01/25/2015 at 15:51

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It never was copy-pasted, its a body of judicial decisions and interpretations compiled over centuries, and courts do look to see what has been decided in other Common Law jurisdictions such as Canada, Australia, and England, to use as a guide.

The issue here is whether getting on the wrong bus and not being let off immediately could constitute wrongful imprisonment. It most likely wouldn't be, anywhere, not the UK, not the US, but if the idiot decided he wanted to litigate and had the money to actually do it, that's what he would argue, and no matter how flimsy his case, there's always at least a slight chance he could prevail, since nothing is certain until its decided.

PS9 > davedave1111 01/25/2015 at 15:52

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That happened 200+ years ago. They weren't writing regulation regarding passenger behavior on busses and drivers back then, and we haven't been copy-pasting every piece of UK legislation word for word since. The laws are different now, and there are none in Florida entitling people to get off the bus whenever they feel like it.

davedave1111 > PS9 01/25/2015 at 16:01

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No, there doesn't have to be specific legislation. It comes under the general category of false imprisonment, or trespass against the person. It's one of the oldest parts of the common law.

Now, it's quite possible that Florida has some specific legislation which sets out precisely how the common law would be interpreted in such circumstances, hence my original 'specific state law' caveat, but the basic starting point is that English and US laws tend to be similar, having come from a similar base. They're both common law systems, unlike, say, France, which uses a completely different set of laws and rules based on Roman law - see http://about-france.com/french-legal-s… .

By the way, there's no such thing as UK legislation. England and Wales have a separate legal system to Scotland, and Northern Ireland is separate again.

PS9 > ranwhenparked 01/25/2015 at 16:04

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Courts do not write the laws, legislatures do. Legislating bodies can use Common Law as a guide, but they are exactly that; a guide. Sovereign entities - Florida, for example - are still going to make their own rules and regulations which may or may not conform to common law, and because of that, you cannot expect the same rules and regulations that exist in your home nation to persist unchanged everywhere on Earth. I cannot speak for anywhere else, but no one can expect courts in the U.S. to pick Common Law over stare decisis.

ranwhenparked > PS9 01/25/2015 at 16:07

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The original poster was simply speculating whether not being allowed to get off the bus could be considered wrongful imprisonment in either England or Florida. The answer is probably not, potentially under some circumstances, but most likely no.

And the idiot passenger was just bluffing anyway when he started talking about getting a lawyer, because nobody would waste time and money on something so trivial.