The news reported yesterday about a young student, a 15 year old boy, who was on a bus (#947) to Jerusalem. He got off and went to the luggage compartment to get his bags and he had to lean in to get them as they had shifted and moved further in. The driver must not have noticed him and closed the compartment door. The door banged the kid and pushed him into the compartment.

Nowadays nearly everyone has a cellphone, so the kid called the police from the luggage compartment of the bus and told them about his situation with details of the bus and its course. The police dispatched cops from Jerusalem who proceeded to locate the bus and extricate the kid. Thankfully he came out safe and sound.

I remember being concerned about that happening every time I needed to climb in to get bags that had shifted and slid inward deep into the compartment. Thankfully it never happened to me, but there are so many stories of people this did happen to.

Egged, and all the bus companies, need to redesign those luggage compartments. More importantly, they need to put in sensors so the driver can easily detect if someone is still down there and not just rely on the mirrors. If they already have video to the compartment, it needs to be audited and adjusted to give the driver a better, a more complete, view, in addition to sensors that would detect a persons down there and warn the driver.