Passenger who missed his stop asks bus driver to U-turn, demands money for taxi ride

Did he press the bell?

An elderly man stopped a bus from continuing its journey after he complained that the bus captain missed his stop.

"Now he wants my bus to U-turn," wrote a passenger who filmed the incident and shared the clips on TikTok last Saturday (June 19) night.

According to Lianhe Wanbao, this happened aboard bus service 53 that was travelling from Hougang towards Pasir Ris.

In a series of videos that spanned over eight minutes, the man was seen confronting the bus captain at his seat.

"Give me the number of the bus operator, I want to complain about the bus captain!" he said in accented Mandarin as he pulled out his mobile phone, even threatening to call the police at one point.

The man insisted that he had pressed the 'stop' bell when the bus was approaching his stop, and claimed that the bus captain did not open the doors to let him alight.

As he realised that the bus captain did not understand or speak his language, he got agitated.

Seeing that the argument (and the bus) was going nowhere, a few Mandarin-speaking passengers stepped in and tried to resolve the issue by suggesting that he get off the bus and walk back to the missed bus stop.

The indignant man bristled at their suggestion, asking, "Why should I get off?"

He repeated his request for the bus captain to make a U-turn and later demanded that the bus captain book a taxi for him.

When fellow passengers explained to him that he was delaying their journey, he did not listen and said that he was only taking up the bus captain's time.

One of them even offered to accompany the man to take a bus from a bus stop on the opposite side of the road but he rejected it saying he couldn't walk far due to his age.

Eventually, the passengers boarded the next bus plying the same route, the person who filmed the incident said, adding that he didn't know how the issue was resolved in the end.

@wreon88

Things I’ve learnt from the debacle ##fyp ##singapore

♬ original sound - wreon88

He has since removed the TikTok clips on Monday (June 21), saying that they incited too much negativity. He also urged others to be more kind and patient, and not "label people unnecessarily".

In 2019, a woman who missed her stop similarly stopped a bus from moving off.

She blocked the double-decker bus with her body, demanding that the bus captain do a U-turn back to her intended bus stop. Two passers-by managed to persuade her to get off the bus by offering to accompany her to her destination.

AsiaOne has reached out to SBS Transit for more information.

lamminlee@asiaone.com