You may have heard long time member and bus operator Angus McIntyre recount his early days driving trolleycoaches. You probably remember him telling that when he joined BC Hydro in 1969, coaches did not have a righthand rearview mirror. “If you wanted to change into lane 1, (curbside), you eased over gently. If you heard a honking, you backed off, and tried a little later,” says Angus. That was how drivers were trained to do lane changes!
While examining some documents donated by OTC Maintenance Manager Jimmy Wright’s estate, I noticed a diary that contained this entry: March 20th, 1970 Right hand mirrors fitted to all vehicles. In addition the entry also noted that this now allowed 4th-Oak buses to resume using the ramp from the Granville Bridge to Seymour St. Intrigued, I searched for an entry that detailed when 4th-Oak buses stopped using Seymour St.
I found it, dated January 30th, 1968.
SEYMOUR RAMP – effective this day, all transit services taken off Seymour ramp of Granville Bridge and routed via Granville, Davie, Seymour. This revision occasioned by traffic lane changes at the south end of the bridge which requires transit vehicles to operate closer to the centre of the bridge with a consequent hazardous lane changing manoeuver to the Seymour Ramp.
Was this incident the catalyst for fitting right-hand mirrors?
What we can say is that there was no legal requirement for BC Electric to fit right-hand mirrors to buses before 1958. The Motor Vehicle Act Regulations of 1958 codified the requirement that where an internal rear-view mirror was ineffective in providing a view of the roadway behind, outside mirrors must be fitted. Even the 1957 CD-52s were delivered without right-hand mirrors and had to be retrofitted. But there was no requirement to retrofit any of the Brill trolleycoaches because they were not motor vehicles. They were regarded as (street) railway vehicles. They did not even need licence plates! Only with the modernization of the Motor Vehicle Regulations and the establishment of ICBC in 1973 were trolleycoaches reclassified as road vehicles.
No matter what was the reason for the omission, one thing is clear: in the increasingly demanding traffic conditions of the time, the additional mirror reduced the stress level of the Vancouver bus operator.