Close call.

A fairly quiet day really, the not so good weather we seem to be having has not encouraged people from swarming into the bay for their holidays. Either that or everyone went up to Branscombe to watch the Napoli get blown in two. If you missed it they are going to have an other go on Wednesday as the poor oil covered ship is still in one piece. There was one noticeable incident, lasted about 3 seconds and if it hadn't been for a passenger standing on the platform waiting to get off at the next stop, would have lasted much longer.

I was waiting at the lights at Belgrave Road coming onto Torquay, there are three lanes at this junction and I was in the outside lane, next to me was a car and the left lane was empty but shortly to be occupied by a car containing a slightly shaken and very annoyed driver. Now the left lane has a left turn filter light which turns green before the centre lane and the outside lane get their green light to go straight on. Out of Belgrave Road, riding on the pavement came this child, a boy about 12 years old who had he arrived a second later would not have made it to 13. He must have seen me and the car next to me stationary and assumed it was safe to ride headlong into the road. There was a car approaching in the left lane to turn left and he had the green filter light and was going fairly fast. The boy on the bike managed to swerve and the car managed to brake just enough so they missed each other. Now I hadn't seen any of this because in the corner of the bus there is a 20 cm wide post, there to hold the upper deck in place but also provides a bit of a blind spot. As the child came of the pavement he was in this blind spot and, more importantly I had just got a green light and was pressing down on the accelerator. Standing on the platform as I mentioned earlier was the hero of the day, the passenger had seen the near miss between the child and the car and had exclaimed, "Oh my god." I looked and braked and boy on the bike had his second near miss with death all in the space of one second. Had the car in the left lane arrived a second later the boy would not have had to swerve and the car would not have had to brake hard and the passenger would not have cried out to his god and I wouldn't have looked and the boy and his bike would have been under the bus.

All in a days work, but not every day thank goodness.