Bus Passengers Steal Emergency Hammers For Walnuts

Try to avoid being involved in a bus accident in China, because some passengers have reportedly been stealing the emergency escape hammers to use as nutcrackers.

According to Shanghaiist, two different men who do not know each other in Zhengzhou, China, were caught stealing those little red hammers on buses that are designed for trapped passengers to use to break the windows in case they need to escape. Apparently, those hammers looked like convenient and attractive free nutcrackers, because both men said they were stealing the hammers to crack walnuts.

Both men were reportedly caught by bus drivers because the hammers are attached to an alarm that rings if some nut-loving thief tries to steal them. The current security system is an improvement over the previous one, because the hammers used to just dangle on strings, and a person could just snip the thread and carry the hammer home to crack all the nuts he or she wanted.

Apparently this is a big problem for the bus companies — people frequently steal the emergency hammers to use as nutcrackers.

"We lose at least 2,000 emergency hammers every year," an officer with a Zhengzhou bus company said. "People always explain that they use it for cracking things at home."