Close Call.

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.

The Power of the Blog

On Sunday I wrote asking if anyone knew what was happening to this section of road in Newton. There have been temporary traffic lights here since January and the road works were finished several weeks ago. However the lights are still there as the road is too narrow for a bus and a car to pass each other. I did ask the Health and Safety Officer at work if he could find out. He is also the Union Rep so he should have been able to use his connections to get some information. All he did was send management a note. Well I could have done that.

Anyway I went into Sherborne Rd on Tuesday and there standing talking at the lights was a senior police office, a contractor in a yellow jacket and some one who could have been either an FBI agent or some one from the Highways department. Probably the latter, funny how council officials tend to look like FBI agents. Could be the dark suits.

To day when I went down there, even more yellow jackets standing there looking at the width of the road with puzzled looks. Some one made a cock up and we are going to suffer with yet more road works.


Now was it the blog that produced this activity, or did the union rep's note to management do the trick. Or maybe the email I sent Teignbridge Council on Tuesday morning pointing out the difficulty this stretch of road was causing had the desired effect. Who knows? Who cares so long as they fix the problem in the near future or at least some time before I retire.

Two Days so Different

Tuesday I took over my bus which had arrived on time but the bus in front had been a few minutes late. This is nice as it means the driver in front is picking up some of my passengers. If he gets too late and I catch him up I will go past and help him out. He never got so late that I could get in front of him so I had an early first half. After lunch there were two of us waiting in Paignton bus station to take over incoming buses. The other driver was taking bus working 1206 and I was after 1207 , both came in together and we managed to take the wrong buses. So when we realized we got on the radio and altered the paper work. Easier than changing buses. Well most of the afternoon was like the morning, always a bus not too far in front but too far to get past. A nice easy day.

So you all know what happened today. I started in Torquay and should have left at 10:11 but the bus didn't turn up till 10:28. The reason, a broken down vehicle at Manor Corner. And the vehicle that was broken down was large, about 14 feet high, a bit over 8 feet wide and about 32 feet long, just to make matters worse. And Manor Corner is probably the busiest junction in the Bay,just to make matters even worser. To add to my problems the bus in front of me had not been held up by this large broken down vehicle and this meant I started to pick up a lot of passengers and run even later. When I had picked up the bus and reported that I was 17 mins down one controller who I will not name said, "Not to worry, you'll soon make that up." I love an optimist.

At one point I was well over 45 mins down. On Tuesday I had carried 96 passengers and the last time I had done 3612 duty, the one I was doing today I had carried 224 passengers. To day 361. And guess what duty I have tomorrow. If I hear one word about broken down vehicles I am going home.

Just the Thing for Fleet St and Sherborne Rd

Those of you who just love to watch cars and vans driving along Fleet Street in Torquay and through Sherborne Rd in Newton Abbot should not click on the link below. The rest should and then write and tell Torbay Council and Teignbridge Council what a good idea these bollards are. Thanks to jimmy and anon for sending me the link.

Magic

NHS Riots in Torquay

OK, it wasn't a riot but you know what these newspapers are like with eye catching headlines. What it was was a hundred or so National Health Service workers having a well ordered stroll through the centre of Torquay on a damp Saturday lunch time and guess who got caught up in it.

They were protesting about the way the government are running the NHS. Hospitals are losing vital services like Doctors and Nurses and Equipment and Drugs but are being over run with admin departments and red tape, enough red tape to stretch from here to Alfa Centuri. Which is a long way believe me. The NHS is and has always been used as a political football. Getting kicked about just so one political party can score points over the other. What I can not understand is that the Government have been running the NHS since 1948. Surely they should be able to do it properly by now after 58 years.

P.S. Sorry NHS workers, a million people took to the streets to try and stop Blair the Dicktator from going to war with Iraq and he took not a blind bit of notice. I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you. You'd need a tracheostomy to get you breathing again and there is a 3 month wait.

Three on lookers giving their whole hearted enthusiastic support.