Megabus journeys journeys come under EU driving rules so the buses are fitted with tachographs and the driver has to insert the current day’s chart into the tachograph. The tachograph then records the driving hours as well as speed. Tachographs are a mixed blessing! Their record is accepted in Court so if you exceed the speed limit it’s all recorded and you could be ‘done’ for it. On the other hand they can prove innocence as mine did a couple of months ago.
I was driving into Brighton in the outside lane of two lanes, approaching traffic lights at which I was to turn right and had my indicator going. Just as I was about to pass an illegally parked car in the inside lane I heard a bang. A driver in the inside lane had seen the parked car blocking their lane and just swung out to pass it without a glance to see if it were clear for them to change lanes. I pulled over, checked the bus which didn’t have a mark on it, and walked back to the car where the only damage was the door mirror hanging at an odd angle. The car driver told me it was my fault for swerving into her lane, hitting her and then pulling back into my lane! “Utter nonsense” I told her and asked if she wanted my details, she moaned some more and I repeated the offer of my details. Then she said she’d write my registration number down, she did and I went off.
About a week later I received Notification of Intended Prosecution from the Police for failing to stop at the scene of an accident, failing to notify the accident to the Police within 24 hours and negligent driving! The young ‘lady’ had gone to the Police and made a statement that I’d hit her car with the bus, badly damaged her car, caused her a back injury and sped away!
The Police were satisfied that I had stopped because my tacho chart showed that I slowed quickly from 35 kph and was then stationary for 8 minutes at the precise time she claimed I was speeding off. The time and distance to my journeys end allowed the location where I’d stopped to be calculated and it was where she claimed it had happened. I asked the Police to prosecute her for knowingly making a flase statement and wasting Police time but having heard nothing more I assume they are dropping it. She could have cost me my job if I’d not been able to prove my innocence yet she gets off.
Sometimes Megabus passengers watch’s are so wildly wrong that they arrive at the stop after the bus has left (they’d never just not leave enough time to get there, or maybe oversleep, would they?). Then they ring Head Office and complain that the bus left the stop early and that’s why they missed it and now Megabus must put them on a train, or even a plane, for free! The driver is later asked to send a copy of their tacho chart for that journey to Head Office so that the time the bus left the stop can be determined. I’ve never heard of a genuine case where the driver really did leave early, dead on time yes, late unfortunately sometimes, early never.
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