Following testimonies published by “Le Parisien” at the end of August, which accused RATP drivers of covering the indicator lights on the dashboards of buses before they were subjected to technical inspection, an investigation was ordered by Jean Castex.
RAS The result of the internal investigation into the maintenance of the 4,700 RATP buses, submitted to its CEO Jean Castex on September 6 and deciphered this Sunday by The Parisianconcludes: “In light of all the evidence collected, this report concludes that there has been no compromise in the safety of buses when carrying out maintenance and technical inspection operations on vehicles.”
The report was requested by the head of RATP on August 21, following an article in The Parisian in which the operator’s drivers accused the public transport company in the Paris region of imposing manipulations on them to camouflage the buses’ warning signals before their half-yearly technical inspection. The aim of this operation was to avoid the detection of a possible malfunction and the immobilization of the bus.
According to the testimonies collected, the drivers were given an electronic suitcase with which they could “Clear all warning lights indicating a technical problem on the dashboard before going through the inspection.” According to the Parisian daily, “The on-board computer does not have time to reactivate the alerts” et “According to the drivers interviewed, this dubious manipulation would make it possible to avoid a second inspection, which is obligatory if a warning light was on during the technical inspection.”.
The RATP acknowledges in its report that drivers could be required to use these electronic suitcases. “provided by the manufacturers” to intervene on the warning lights of the buses before the technical inspection “in just one very specific case,” tell Le Parisien: “to turn off the anti-pollution light, which can tend to come on unexpectedly when buses are being transported to technical centres in the outer suburbs at an unusual speed for urban buses.”
Costly immobilizations
The method would avoid costly downtime and reduced fleet availability, which could lead to potential penalties for the public carrier, the daily said, adding that it had “was able to see the operation for himself” in June and July in front of a Val-d’Oise control center welcoming buses circulating within Paris.
The RATP then declared that a “The orange dashboard light is not a safety hazard for driving the vehicle, only the red light is.” and recognized that the «valise de diagnostic» allow “to reset the measurement values”. “But when the bus is powered up during the technical inspection, in the event of a major malfunction, the fault reappears”.
In their investigation, the authors, the general delegate for transport safety at RATP and the director of the company’s surface networks department (buses and trams), establish that “The acknowledged fault (the technical term for the extinction of a warning light) will remain present in the vehicle’s history. During the technical inspection, the opacity of the smoke is systematically measured. The acknowledgement of warning lights on the dashboard cannot in any case mask the anomaly reports of a fault that is still present.”
