Operation of buses is prohibited if:

Explanation

In both cases; both the emergency door openers not working and the number-plate figures and letters not being repeated on the rear of the body.

An emergency door opener is a mechanism allowing a passenger to open the door without the bus driver and without the vehicle's electrical power. Its failure prohibits operation of the bus on its own, because the scenario it is designed for is exactly this moment: a collision, fire or rollover in which the driver is unconscious or the door-opening system has failed. If in such a situation a passenger cannot open the door, dozens of people are trapped inside a closed compartment and the evacuation time — measured in seconds in a fire — is lost.

Repeating the number-plate figures and letters on the rear of the body is also mandatory for a bus, and their absence counts as a separate offence. Its function is identification at a distance: a standard plate can be read only from a few metres, but large lettering on the rear of the body is legible from far away, in darkness and from the angle of traffic monitoring cameras. That means it is possible to report dangerous driving, to trace a hit-and-run, and to monitor the public transport fleet.

Note that these two faults are of completely different kinds — one occupant safety and the other identification — but both are on the list of conditions prohibiting operation of a bus. In this family of questions, the temptation you must resist is to pick only the "more technical" fault.

• A defective emergency opener really does prevent operation, but choosing it alone leaves aside the unrepeated number-plate fault. • The absence of the repeated plate on the rear of the body really is an offence too, but the emergency opener fault is raised alongside it and you must accept both.

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