Ticket machines and migraines

[Davey123]

Hi,

I'm interested in becoming a bus driver. I have my provisional PCV licence and I'm booked in for the theory tests next Saturday. I am comfortable driving large vehicles as I hold my Class C+E licence and have driven HGVs previously.

I have one quite big (to me) issue which is I suffer from migraines and one of my triggers are digital screens. I'm okay for up to an hour then that would be it. Do bus drivers constantly use the ticket machines for long periods or is it in short bursts? Does anyone else suffer from migraines but adapted well to using the ticket machines?

My other option would be to do coach driving if the screen use would be too much for me.


Thanks for any help.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[pepperpot80]

Hi Dave, the ticket machine isn't something you're looking at constantly, but it's certainly a few minutes at a time, quite regularly. Only you can tell what is going to be a trigger for you, but this would certainly be a discussion to be had with occupational health at any of the medium-to-large sized bus operators and would be taken into consideration by all operators. On the flip side, many bus operators are offering open days where you can go and try driving - from big public events like the East Yorkshire Big Bus Day to smaller depot events. This would be great so you could have a go and talk it through with experienced drivers and driver managers. If you've a local operator you're interested in driving with it'd be worth getting in touch - ultimately, I think most depots would chew your arm off to get you on the bus at the moment.

Obviously, coach driving comes with shorter stints looking at screens, and the breaks between screen use are much longer, but depending on the operator you may still have a TomTom or similar in field of view, and faffing about with devices for QR scanning. digital tachos etc. is still part of the job - again, it depends how serious the triggers are.

 

[Observer]

Most ticket machines you can turn down the brightness on them anyway I believe.

 

[APT618S]

What about mirrorless buses with screens replacing the mirrors which have started to appear over the past few years. Are these likely to become universal eventually ?

 

[david1212]

What about mirrorless buses with screens replacing the mirrors which have started to appear over the past few years. Are these likely to become universal eventually ?

As well as cameras & screens replacing mirrors at least some dashboards are now digital even if they look traditional with a dark / black background and always in peripheral vision.
Thinking perhaps more of coaches than buses as the former cover a much wider range of routes what about sat-nav screens with live traffic flow information? Like a car they could be multi-function switching to heating & ventilation, radio / entertainment etc

My thoughts are if @Davey123 is affected by all screens / screen background colours equally or only some and differences between daytime / daylight and night / dark. An operator is unlikely to employ a staff member who can only drive in daylight.

 

[Davey123]

Thanks for your replies everyone. I think on reflection I will try coach driving. I'm okay with sat navs as I just tend to listen to guidance and only look at the screen for complex junctions. I'm okay with CCTV systems such as vehicle cameras so mirror cams should be no problem.

 

[WibbleWobble]

I do know that Ticketers blank out whilst the bus is moving - I've seen it switch to a black screen with a single line of small white text.

 

[Mwanesh]

Ticket machine screens don't stay bright for long periods. They tend to go into idle mode when not in use.