010 - Tail swing is real, very real

My first few weeks as a sole bus operator was not without incident

Welcome aboard, everyone. You’ll remember my last post was about my exit assessment, which I passed with flying colours. I texted my tutor after passing and was welcomed to the “fraternity of bus operators”, which, to be honest, felt a little bit like I was being welcomed into the communist party. I’m officially an underpaid member of the proletariat working class, and it felt bloody good.

I drove the following week without incident. I’d seen a notice on the board in the depot congratulating a driver for driving 12 months without an accident. I wanted to be that person. Ten days later that dream was shattered, literally.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the incident, except that it was an altercation with an illegally parked truck. My first trip of the morning took me through the centre of town.

I approached a relatively busy bus stop—that’s one where 99% of the time you are either picking up, dropping off, or both—and this is where the incident took place.

If there isn’t enough room to squeeze into a stop then commonsense suggests we stay on the road, and stop, parallel to the footpath, letting passengers off on the road. This is still a reasonably safe place for passengers to get on or off the bus, as there’s no opportunity for any traffic to cut down the inside between the bus and the footpath.

So, a delivery truck, with mirrors that stick out a very long way, had decided to park on, and at, the rear of the bus stop. I’m a new driver. When I looked at the stop from 100 metres out I thought “Yep, I’ve got room to nudge into that stop. If I do this I won’t be disrupting early morning traffic, and passengers will be able to get off or on the bus safely. Happy days!”

As it turned out, not so happy.

I swiped the wing mirror of the truck into the stop. That’s not so bad. The mirror sits on a big swinging arm, and not too much damage appeared to be done, other than damage to my pride.

I opened the front and back doors. Passengers got on and off. I shut the doors and indicate to pull out. I pull out.

Crunch.

The rear of the bus had not cleared the truck so when I swung out, the rear of the bus swung in, clipping the cab of the truck. I was absolutely mortified. I stopped the bus and hopped out to see the damage and talk to the truck driver. I couldn’t find the driver. He/she had the rear door open and was ‘delivering’. There was minimal damage to the bus, apart from a small hole in a glass panel high up on the inside rear.

I took photos of the truck, and took its license plate, then carried on with my trip, feeling very frustrated and annoyed at myself.

All day, in my head, I could hear what I knew my tutor driver would have said to me. “Stay in the road - there’s not enough room to get in there. It doesn’t matter if you hold up traffic…”

Damn. My chance of getting awarded a “No-Accidents-in-12-Months” certificate had been dashed after only eight days of driving.

I had my rest stop that morning at the Kaiwharawhara depot where I was expressing my frustration to one of the more experienced drivers. His advice to me was not to worry. “We’ve all done it, and we’ll probably all do it again. As long as you learn from your mistake then it’s gonna be a valuable lesson.”

I also phoned my supervisor to tell him the news, and he was equally supportive. I’m not shying away from what happened, at all. It was a stupid thing that I did, but also, a stupid place for a delivery truck to park. Since this incident, I’ve seen that truck a number of times and it no longer parks at bus stops - so perhaps we both learned a lesson that day.

This event got me thinking about all the things you should and shouldn’t do around a bus. That’s next time, on Thanks, Driver!