Broken down and Phoning for Help

Broken down and Phoning for Help or Just Phoning?


When I took this picture the driver had his hazard lights on because he was broken down in a dangerous place and was on the phone trying to arrange for some breakdown firm to come and give him assistance.

Or he had his hazard lights on and was just making a phone call. In a dangerous place.

My guess is the latter as two mins later he went past me at the next bus stop. Not what the department of Transport really ment when they brought in the law making drivers pull over before answering the phone.

Traffic,Water and a Crash.

Yesterday it was a traffic out of the woodwork day. When I took over my bus it was 15 mins late. An hour and half late I was still 10 mins down when a red light came on on the dash and a very loud buzzer started it's attempt to send me even future down the road to deafness. A couple of radio calls to Orange control and it was decided the bus was low on water so the passengers got transferred to the next bus and I drove the two miles to Paignton Bus Station nice and carefully. There I put 20 litres of water in the radiator. Light went out and the buzzer stopped scaring the resident seagulls.

After meal break, back to the traffic, still 15 mins down with a bus just in front of me who was 30 mins down. The over the radio came the news of a crash at Tweenaway Cross. The 12A, which I and the bus in front were on, go through Tweenaway so this was just the news we had been waiting for. Tweenaway can be slow at the best of times without having a couple of car drivers deciding to redesign the fronts of their cars. Now by now I knew the 12 behind me was 15 mins away and got on the radio to check the status at Tweenaway and was told,"Long delays". It would still be better for those people wanting to go the Brixham to wait for the twelve. And I told lots of passengers this. With the best of intentions. When I got to Tweenaway there were long delays, but not the way I was going. It was clear, the other roads were jammed up but Totnes Road was like a Sunday morning at 4:30am and I got to Brixham 5 mins early. I wasn't due out for 15 mins and had a nerve racking time when I realized that all those people in Torquay and Paignton I had told would be better waiting for a 12 had not yet arrived.

Just as I set of 2 Number 12 s arrived full to the gunalls (what ever they are?) with all those people who had waited 20 mins for a bus and could have been on mine and home 15 mins earlier. I just looked in the off side mirror and hoped no one notice me and start screaming abuse at me. Sorry to all of you.

Who Drove a Car Over the Footbridge?

Onlookers could not believe their eyes as an elderly couple got lost and twice drove their car over Torquay's narrow harbour footbridge.
Police say it was sheer luck the car didn't end up in the drink after the pensioners took their wrong turn. They drove:
OUT of the car park.
OVER the busy old fish quay and paths, then
ON TO the showpiece 50-metre pedestrian bridge.
Bemused witnesses say the couple, who were thought to be visitors, even honked their horn on their return bridge trip to get another elderly couple out of the way.
The incident occurred at midday on Sunday when witnesses say the couple left the Pavilion car park in their green Ford Focus.
The incident was reported to police who say the registered keeper of the car was not local.
As no complaint was made, no further action is likely.

The Action that should be taken is that all drivers over 70 and every two years after that should be required to take an assesment lesson with a local driving school. If the instructor thinks they are OK then fine. If not then they should have a test with a Department of Transport Examinor who would have the final say regarding their continuing to hold a driving licence.

Jeremy Clarkson, Such a Nice Man.

Jeremy Clarkson in his Mirror column on Saturday has shown that there is hope even for him. Though the main article on his page spread in the Daily Boobs was an outright attack on all bus drivers and those who travel on buses I can forgive him slightly for this. He is a busy man and with the Friday dead line approaching and 2000 words still to write he looks round for inspiration.

While stood in a detestable traffic jam caused by all those people who should be out walking the dog instead of clogging up his road with their unimportant journey he notices a bus pull out from a bus stop.

"I know," says our dear Jeremy, "I'll have a go at bus drivers. (Again) "That's always popular". He has after all got to write 2000 words and as long as it has J. Clarkson as the by line it's easy money even if the content is mostly rubbish. The people at the Daily Boobs don't seem to care as long as it fills a page.

No, the area of hope was in one of those bits at the side of the page. A little comment that showed that even the great icon of the "What the fuck is Global Warming?" brigade is into recycling. Even if it was only a crap 4 year old joke he recycled, it is a beginning. There is hope yet.

Oh yes, just in case you missed his piece in the Daily Mirror the joke was the one about the Dept of Transport making bad drivers stick flags on their cars and the really bad drivers fly two flags on their cars. Having seen dear Jeremy drive I imagine if this idea actually did catch on his car would be the only car in London with several 50 foot flag poles stuck on the side to accomadate all his flags.

Well Meaning But Illegal Advice.

Between Windy Corner and Waterside the speed limit used to be 40 mph. Then for some unknown reason some one in the local Highways Department decided that this was too fast and changed it to 30 mph. Now I have driven along that streach of road for 8 years and have never noticed anything that might suggest that 40 mph was too fast. There are no schools, no children playing in the road, no pubs, no pedestrians, no shops, nothing except big houses all with cars in the drive.

Now there was a slight problem with the plan. There is a section of the road that is a duel carrigeway. And there is some rule in the Department of Transport in London which says that duel carigeways that have a 40 limit can not be slowed down to 30 mph.

Unless!

Oh yes there is an "unless" clause some where if you look hard enough. And this unless clause is;- if you pull a bus lane in the duel carrigeway the it can become a 30 mph road. So the council spent lots and lots of our money to put in bus lanes on both sides of the carrigeway. Completely useless bus lanes. Worse than completely useless, they upset car drivers who think that some how we, the bus drivers have conspired to get these useless, expensive bus lanes and are not happy. Well they were made even more unhappy by the fact that some clowns dressed as bus drivers and driving vehicles that look exacly like our buses were using the bus lanes to over take cars on the inside and then cutting up said cars as they emerged from the end of the bus lane at speeds well in excess of the 30 mph the poor car drivers were being forced to drive at.

So a notice went up at work it which the company hinted that they would monitor the situation with a radar gun to check bus speeds. Some one must have moaned to the union, they also put up a notice, this one supporting the company's attempts to deal with these impostors.

So far so good. No problem so far. Drivers should stick to the speed limits even when they appear to defy logic. Even if it is just to avoid 3 penalty points and a £100 fine. The problem comes with the last paragraph of the Union letter which urges drivers to drive, and I quote, "Well below the official speed limit."

Now there are only 3 reasons that you should drive well below the official speed limit.

1. Your vehicle is not designed to be driven that fast, i.e. a milk float or moped.
2. The road conditions demand that for safety reasons you drive below the speed limit.i.e .Lots of bends, snow or ice, lots of pot holes, fog, lots of parked cars, poor visibility and many more I can't be bother thinking about.
3. The traffic conditions also demand that you drive below the speed limit.i.e. All the vehicles in front of you are doing 5 miles an hour and if you drive at 30 mph there will be an awful bang as you hit a few of them. And loads of forms to fill in, including one which will ask,"Why did you leave your last job."

I used to be a driving instructor before I became a bus driver, trust me on this. If the road is clear and the traffic conditions allow then drive at the speed limit, not well below. Some car divers already hate us (see next post ( re Clarkson in the Mirror)), do you want all of them to hate us or are some people just paranoid.