What happens when a driver of a bus hits his alarm ?.
Incident said to be at 17.15h.
Police say they received call at 17.37h and arrived on scene at 17.43h.
Why was so much time lost ?.

G.Virr. wrote:
What happens when a driver of a bus hits his alarm ?. Incident said to be at 17.15h. Police say they received call at 17.37h and arrived on scene at 17.43h. Why was so much time lost ?.

A driver can call for help over his radio using two priorities- a code BLUE call or a code RED emergency call. In this instance, a code RED call would have been initiated by the driver.
He then must wait for a while (normally around 30 seconds) for his radio to connect to Centre Comm - London Buses control centre based in Victoria, London. The driver must then confirm his location with the Centre Comm operator, who will then take details of what is wrong.
The information is then passed onto the emergency services, of which Centre Comm are in the same building as the Met Traffic Police.

By the time this information gets to the police, it can be a slight delay - whereas calling 999 directly could at times be quicker.

As for why so much time was lost - I have no idea. I would like to know how quickly the ambulance arrived.

I am a Bus Driver and indeed drove K2 for five years, although have moved on. Drivers do not have much faith in 'code red' because of the poor response times, so if you see a driver just calling code red and it is obvious immediate assistance from police is required, a 999 call from a passenger giving exact location will help,

firstly i hope the lady is alright now, 2ndly love the OTT report, and 3rdly this just outlines how much the police make london (and greater london) safer....LOL useless as usual.

'DCI Burnside, Sunhill' - Can bus drivers not call 999 or are they instructed to go through Code Red procedure first?

Say if a bus v pedestrian accident occurred and its an obvious life or death situation, surely the driver should dial 999 then call code red?

Thanks All !.Very useful to know the system. It appears passengers should not hesitate to use their mobile phones to dial 999 when a serious incident occurs. Providing of course, as stressed above, that they can accurately describe the location.

This response time by kingston police is typical. They have to be the slowest laziest police force ever. Its about time something was done to shake them up.

probably because the conversation went like this

'so someone has been shot'

'well no, but it smashed a window and the glass fell on an old lady'

'so is she injured?'

'well no....'

'ok then see you in 40 minutes'

do you people honestly think its worth wasting police time on nothing more than a kid firing a bb gun at a bus? or do you want them to catch some real criminals.

yes the window getting smashed was bad. but no one was hurt. get over it

Maybe if 'do-gooders' like Jan didn't impose so much other rubbish and paperwork surrounding human rights on the Police they would be able to deal with the idiots who do this sort of thing properly... by knocking them into next week and teaching them some respect!

"There was a woman who got glass shrapnel in the face. She was in some pain."

So that's not injured then 'Ric'?... ie it would be fine happening to you yeah?

roy - im sorry but im on rics side here....she was standing so she may have had a couple of bits hit her but thats about it....hardly crime of the century. and what do you expect the police to do? magic her better and fix the window lol

Roy the batty

glass in the face is nothing. i spent 10 years in NAM.

glass in cars and on buses is designed to break up into small pieces to minimise injury.

your making out like she was hit by the shard of glass that killed the bad guy in 'Ghost'

Nice to see someone remembers the film Ghost!!!! apart from that though on a more serious note: Who ever did this should be caught, be it kids or adults or who ever they start doing stupid things like firing at a window and end up using the bb gun on other targets such as animals and people, horrible nasty little small minded B******s. Also it was criminal damage that was done. If it had been one of our car windows we would all be up in arms about it and would have called the police in. Oh yeah!!

i learnt not to phone the police. i've had my house burgled twice. they turned up 2 weeks later both times.

no point crying about it though. even if they got there 5 minutes after, my stuff is still gone.

if the old lady was so badly hurt. what about phoning the ambulance instead of the police?

just a though!

i live very close to where this happened, actually on k2 route, and my car has been broken into 4 times. the police did nothing all 4 times, also they didnt turn up for 2 of them. although i did get 4 letters asking me if i needed counselling :) you will never find a kid like him/her. there are too many little rude bwoys round our way now. :(

I am the "old lady" that was SITTING (not standing) on the K2 when the gun was fired at the window & showered glass shards & glass powder all over me & another lady. She was not hurt thankfully & got off the bus as soon as the driver stopped.
I was cut on the face by glass shards & glass powder went into my eye. If I had been sitting up straight the pellet would have gone into my head as it was I was leaning forward sorting out my shopping bags. After I was hit in the face,I thought I had lost my eye, my face started bleeding so I stood up & went to the front of the bus in case another pellet was fired or the rest of the window caved in onto me. I also wanted to talk to the driver, who was very upset. A lady very kindly offered me a wet wipe for my face but I refused because I was concerned that I would rub the glass powder/shards further into my eye/face & cause more problems so I waited for the police & ambulance to arrive. I have no idea how long they took to arrive as I was very shaken & upset. The driver was having problems with the control person who either did not understand or could not hear the name of the road we were on. It seemed a while but when they did come the police took my name,address & phone number & said they "would see me either at the hospital or at home for my statement". They did not do any of that. I waited in all day on Saturday & did not see or hear from them. It was only when my husband rang them on Sunday afternoon & complained about their apparent indifference (re: statement or had I lost an eye?) that they phoned back at 8:00pm Sunday evening to tell me the crime number & to say they had found the pellet & they had done a house to house. He apologised for them not coming around.
I realize this shooting was "small fry" crime compared to all the murders of our young people in and around our inner cities but this is SURBITON, not known as a high crime area.
Ric says "its only a kid with a BB gun (was it him??) and "get over it".
ITS STILL A CRIME and the moronic idiot who fired it may start out with "just" a BB gun but may well end up with an AK47 and take someones life. Will the Rics of this world still be saying "get over it"?. Perhaps Ric does not realize that a BB gun could cause serious injuries to anyone hit in the head or eye or kill a small baby. The pellet did after all go through toughened/lamminated glass. Any gun crime should be taken very seriously, my injuries were thankfully minor but whatever injury victims (& I was the victim) suffer from they are by definition serious to the victim and should be treated with concern, by police & public alike, not indifference or contempt as in "get over it".
If I were Ric I would not be too keen to brag about being in "NAM", that was one of the more shameful episodes of US history and we don't want to get into that area so perhaps he should just "get over it".

how brave of the lady to come forward and tell us what happened. i do hope she is much better. Re Richie, maybe you have never had to use kingston police. or else you would not write such rubbish. if i am complaining about the police how can i be a do gooder. maybe you should learn what these names mean before using them. kingston police are lazy and slow and until you have had to use them you should not comment.