I’m pleased to say that the problems I’ve been having with the blog (no entries appearing) has been fixed at last. My hosting provider had a server failure on the server which held my database, when all the databases had been migrated to a new server mine became corrupt :-( But the good news is that’s fixed, the bad news is that I’ve had a terrible morning.

I had an accident with the bus and two passengers are in hospital. I’d done an early Megabus shuttle run and was ‘spare’, the depot needed a local 5 service covering and asked me to do it. I’d got about 15 passengers on board and was doing approximately 30 mph when a taxi started to pull out of a side road (with stop signs) only a few yards in front of the bus! I could only react instinctively and applied full braking, I couldn’t have pressed the pedal harder, whilst swerving around the vehicle. I avoided the accident but heard a tremendous thud as a passenger hit the floor and slid up to the front of the bus. They didn’t speak or move, I couldn’t open the cab door because they were against it. Another passenger tended to the guy while I called 999. As he lay on the floor and his shirt had come untucked I could see that he was wearing a plastic body/back support. He later told the ambulance crew he’d had spine surgery some weeks before :-( I’m not sure if his back is damaged but he had also had a leg and arm problem. The ambulance crew put these limbs in tubes and then pumped them up. They gave him gas. A lady had hit her chest and was complaing of chest pains, she went off in the same ambulance.

My passengers were the kindest, nicest bunch of people you could wish to meet :-) About half had clearly seen what happened and everyone of them told the Police that the taxi had pulled out in front of me and caused the accident. It had then reversed and driven off very quickly. A witness from outside the bus came to me and offered their details saying they’d seen everything. And, the injured man, as he was being stretchered to the ambulance, told the Police Officer that he’d seen what happened and that it wasn’t the driver’s fault. As soon as the bus could be removed it was taken to our depot where the recordings from the 7 cameras on the bus were downloaded. If anyone studying the video can lip read I hope they wont be offended at what my lips appear to be saying as I braked and swerved.

The Police Officer and I both had a laugh at the taxi registration number taken by one of the passengers, the letters were CUN. We both it agreed it was one letter short of a ‘personal registration” number ;-)