Near-miss

It's not just the passengers that can cause your blood to boil. As a bus driver you have idiots on the road to contend with. I've not had many accidents in my career as a bus driver, though I've had considerably more near-misses.

Yesterday's was at a traffic light-controlled roundabout. I was in the left-hand lane which is for traffic turning left and continuing straight on. A car was in the middle lane, to my right, which is clearly marked for traffic travelling straight on only. The car was alongside me and I noticed as our light had turned to green that the driver had started to indicate left. He accelerated a little faster than me but was certainly not in front of me when he started drifting into my lane.

Well it's not my bus, is it? It's not my excess or my paintwork. If involved in an accident at work, I do have to declare this on my private car insurance renewal, so there is some incentive to avoid collisions.

Things got very close indeed. The road was now curving right, to negotiate the large central island. Rather than him encroaching on me and my lane, the markings then saw me head in his general direction. It was a very tense moment, though I made the decision not to back off. To allow him to pull in front and then cut across me to make an exit was too dangerous. He could always circum-navigate the island again. Indeed he did, pulling into the right-hand lane with no indication and causing a car to slam its brakes on.

Every single action that driver did from choosing the central lane at the roundabout was categorically wrong and dangerous. Even worse was that I was driving a bus that had recently been repainted and was shining resplendently. A nice scuff mark down the side, despite it not being my fault (we'd have CCTV footage too) I'm sure my name would have been mud at the depot.

Common Sense Solution: It's difficult to say, really. I believe my course of action was safer than braking sharply, to allow a car to make a dangerous manoeuvre and cut across my front. This could have ended in a collision as well as sudden braking for my passengers. As it was, my course of action caused none of these and the collision was avoided.