Majority penalized for the minority

Today my family had an experience with a failure of the Distance Fare system.

The bus we took somehow had its fare system not working after a couple of stops. So, all existing passengers could not tap out. After quite some time trying to reset it, and later more time spent trying to resolve the problem by talking to their technical support, still cannot make it work. In the end, almost all alighted and took another bus because we didn't want to waste time waiting for the issue to resolve, which seemed unlikely. Thus, all will be charged the maximum fare, and need to make claim in the following week. Then other bus captain told us that without a ticket from the first bus, we will have to tap in again.

Now, is $ the only issue here? Who is gonna indemnify the time loss of all passengers? Does their insurance policy cater for this? How about if someone's card does not have enough credit for the next trip, especially after the max deduction? There isn't any top up machine at the stop we alighted.

Consider this together with the no drinking on trains (even for infants) rule, I agree with what someone wrote that these policies overly penalize the majority unnecessarily because there might be a few who may behave undesirably.

What is the rational of penalizing maximum charge for not tapping out? Can it be an average charge if from records that is a regular trip the person/card has been making? Can it be estimated by the next tap in, if it happens soon enough at a bus stop / MRT station in the proximity near the bus route? Can the charge be done a day or week later when it became clear enough what had happened?

Also, why is it that we need to make the claim in cases such as this when they have the records of who are affected?

By the way, just read a small notice, in the regular font size (11pt?) that I have noticed for some days regarding an error in distance between two bus stops. Is this a sign of hoping not all will claim back that little money from them?