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Sometimes it just writes itself…

August 7, 2013, 11:47 AM

So I was looking at the Twitter last night after swimming, and I spotted this picture:

Hey @wmata - what kind of discounted fare does this guy have to pay? #NotSoSmartTrip
Source: Craig Sallinger

The tweet for this photo, from @yobigc, went as follows:

Hey @wmata – what kind of discounted fare does this guy have to pay? #NotSoSmartTrip pic.twitter.com/OTwJD0VUdy
August 6, 2013 4:08 PM

For those not familiar, this photo was taken on the back of bus 6508, a New Flyer DE40LFA.  The bus is on 14th Street NW going southbound, at a bus stop at 14th and Girard Streets NW.  It appears to be genuine, as I’m familiar with the location, and the 54 does indeed run on 14th Street NW.  To be fair, though, I don’t know the context of this photo.  My best guess is that this person never actually rode the bus while standing on the back bumper.  I’m guessing that the gentleman depicted here jumped on while the bus was making the stop, and was only standing on the back of the bus for a moment before jumping back off – just long enough to get caught by someone’s cell phone camera.  I highly doubt that this person rode the bus for any distance like this, though I do reserve the right to be wrong (but I certainly hope I’m not).

I do find it somewhat funny that the bus that this person is doing such an unsafe activity on is sporting one of Metro’s current crop of safety ads.  You can kind of get the gist of the ad from the photo.  One person is changed into a white silhouette, and then the area covered by the gentleman in the picture is a one-sentence statement about safety on Metro (in the vein of not getting accidentally injured on Metro, rather than the terrorism-related ads from the 2000s).

Noting this, I realized that this photo was a Metro safety ad in itself.  So I made this man into a white silhouette, and here he is:

"Riding on the back of the bus will not score you points with your friends."

I can’t get over that someone would actually jump onto the back of a bus that was in service, though.  If the bus was parked and out of service, then sure, no worries.  The bus isn’t going anywhere in that case.  But on a bus in service… wow.  That guy’s nuts for doing that.

Categories: Advertising, Amusing, WMATA