Saturday was a very full day. Working at the Gaithersburg St. Patrick’s Parade in the morning, going down to the Writer’s Center in Bethesda for an open house in the afternoon, and then going out to dance at Glen Echo in the evening. (And somewhere in between, taking a nap; that was one very long day!) On the way out for the evening’s activities, I made a detour to buy gasoline and on my way back to the main road, found myself stuck waiting first at a railroad crossing, and later, behind a bus.
There was a light drizzle falling and when I first saw the bus, I was bemused that the route number seemed to spell out a word. I couldn’t quite make out the numbers, but it looked a bit like “HE7A.” How they come up with the combination of letters and numbers that makes up a route number is a mystery to me, so I didn’t pay much attention.

After going through an intersection, I started paying a bit more attention to the bus. That’s because I had noticed the running lights were blinking in a way that would get your attention and instead of “HE7A”, the route number instead said, “HELP!”

Aside from it being the first convenient vehicle, I can’t imagine why someone would hijack a bus. But as soon as it sunk in what was going on, I grabbed my cell phone and called 911. I told the dispatcher what I was looking at and where we were. It turned out they already knew about the bus, but didn’t know which one it was (this area has several gazillion buses after all). I was able to give the dispatcher the bus’ ID number and an update on where it was turning.

Going on the idea that the bus really had been hijacked, following it probably wasn’t the safest thing to do; but there were no signs of police cars whizzing into the area and I thought it might be helpful if someone could give them an update on where it had gone. (Buses are big and difficult to hide, but as noted above, this area does have several gazillion of them.)

The last I saw of the bus, it had pulled over to the side of the road. While I was trying to go around, the driver hopped out, looked up at the route number display, got back in, turned it off, and came back out to make sure it was off. My best guess is that he’d been driving around for the last couple of miles, completely unaware that he’d bumped the “I’ve been hijacked” button.

It had never occurred to me before that a bus might be equipped with a panic button like that. It does kind of make sense though. And where you have panic buttons, you undoubtedly also have the occasional incident where the button gets pushed by mistake. But that’s a lot better than the alternative of having an actual emergency.

It certainly made a memorable start to my evening.