I had a close call to day. I stopped at Jury's Corner bus stop on the way to Newton. After I had loaded up I put a right turn signal on to pull away and a car flashed his lights (1) so of I went. 80 yards past the lights there is a side road, Avenue Rd it's called. There was a lady in a red car waiting to turn right onto the main road. Now the Newton road is the busiest road in the South West and getting busier, Our nice Mr Tony Blair would sooner go to war than build us a by-pass so it is going to get worse before Global Warming kills of the car for good, anyway it is impossible to emerge from a side road unless some one lets you out. I do from time to time but not this time. I've just accelerated hard away from the stop, I'm not going to upset the person behind, who has just slowed to let me out, by braking hard. Well that wasn't the plan but it was what I ended up doing as this lady drove out in front of me. I mean I am driving a bus that is almost 14 feet high and over 8 feet wide and weighs 11.5 tonnes. If I had hit her she would have been able to claim it was my fault as I didn't have "DANGER OF DEATH" printed on the front of the bus in big letters. (Now there's an idea for the Health and Safety brigade). I ended up stopping 6 inches away from her after doing what used to be called an emergency stop but I call a blind panic stop.
Well I hope I scared her because she sure produced a string of obscenities from me in very quick time. All very quietly under my breath I should add.
Please note; No passengers were offended or hurt in the making of this skid mark.
Note (1) In the UK if you are letting someone out of a side road or allowing a bus to pull away from a bus stop you flash your headlights. Not many motorist know this; not the bit about letting the bus out any way.
8 comments:
I trained myself out of that sort of reflexive panic stop. I once slammed on the brakes to save denting an idiot's car only to have a little old lady, who had just stood up, fall and agonizingly dislocate her shoulder. The half hour or so I would have spent with the idiot, exchanging information etc. was nothing to the hour or so I spent with a wailing weeping seventy something year old woman who refused to get in an ambulance and kept insisting that she was OK. Plus, I've never felt guilty about damage to some fool's car, but I am really disturbed when a passenger is hurt. The verdict from the company was that the accident was unpreventable and that I was not at fault, but I would have felt better if I'd made a prudent brake application and bashed up the idiot's car.
Hope the skid mark you refer to was the one on the road, but fear it may not be so...(heh heh heh)
Flashing lights to allow some one out is not recognised as a legal signal, flashing lights is only a warning to draw attention to the fact you are there. If you pull out when some one flashes and an accident happens you will still be help responsible.
Mike
Dave,
You were noted taking a photo of the green/cream Leyland National leaving Torquay depot yesterday morning, any chance of a copy of the photo please? If so then would you like a copy of the photo that showed you taking the said snap?!
James
I don't think your passengers would have been offended Dave, more likely they were joining in, you just didn't hear them.
I almost gave the finger to a truck (lorry) driver a few weeks ago. He gave our bus driver a dirty look after he tried to pass us going round a corner, not realising how much room we needed.
It was one of those little trucks under 3.5 tonnes that you can drive with a car licence. He obviously didn't see the sign on the back of the bus that said "Do not overtake turning vehicle." A legal requirement here for anything over 7.5 metres in length.
You get to know your regular drivers after a while and tend to stick up for them.
If you slow down to let someone out out takes them a few seconds to work out you have slowed down. If you flash your lights it is drawing attention to the fact that you have slowed down and they can move out. The Department for Transport might not approve but every other driver in the country does.
You are not a driving instructor are you?
Hello Justajob,
In my day, you could fail your driving licence for flashing your lights to allow someone through.
You still will fail your test for flashing which is why when I was a driving instructor some years ago I never used to allow my pupils to flash. Even today if a bus driver is waiting to go and a driving school car is coming along it will slow to let you out but never flash. Like I said, the Department of Transport is against flashing but everyone else is for it. You will have to ask the DoT what they have against it.
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