How London bus drivers changed the world

A new study has found that smiling at London bus drivers—an act rarely attempted in the capital except under experimental conditions—increases their happiness. The finding feels simultaneously obvious (of course it would) and faintly unexpected: London has been operating a control group in which passengers and drivers greet each other with surly indifference for decades; any affection feels anathema. The authors of the research, which was conducted by the University of Sussex and others, hope it will lead to “more interaction and kindness on buses”. On the Number 24 bus to Hampstead Heath, Londoners are sceptical. Bus drivers, says Liz Hands, a passenger, are generally a “miserable” lot.

It might seem improbable that a report on London’s buses could change behaviour. But it has happened before. For London’s buses have an underappreciated role in the history of medical science. In the 1940s, a single study of London’s transport workers transformed epidemiology, medicine and the way we live now. Every time you go on a run, check your stepcount, or take the stairs instead of the lift, you are treading a path forged by the feet of the workers on London’s buses.