What I feared most

When I was driving coaches I was asked many things, but one  has always stuck in my mind. I arrived in London after a very wet drive. One of the passengers asked 'do you ever worry about having an accident and do you think about the passengers and what would happen if you did and what do you fear most' Wow, never thought about that. And that was the point.I just worry about driving safely and, it sounds a bit selfish, worry about myself. I think if you worried to much about the 50 or so passengers and what would happen if you had an accident I think you would very soon end up in the funny farm. However, of all the things that can and do go wrong, the thing I have always worried about is hitting a pedestrian. Unfortunately that has now happened. The bus I was driving came into contact with a pedestrian. I will not go into the full circumstances for obvious reasons. However, there were no serious injuries apart from shock on all sides. One interesting thing is it is very true in that people say you go on to some kind of auto pilot and just do what you have to do.  In this situation there are a set of rules that have to be followed. Ambulance called, Police called although they come automatically in these situations, Inspector called. A senior member of management team is also notified and the driver given a company breath test, although in this case the Police did not. I am still driving, back on the horse etc. with no problems apart from  I get a little twitchy when I see pedestrians close to the road.

Well chuffed

As a driver you obviously have to remember a lot of routes. As a driver in Bath I have to know around 25 routes, some short city routes and some long 'country' routes. As a new driver this seems an impossible task. However. with the help of 'buddy' drivers and other drivers you soon pick them up. However, like any other job you find yourselves driving the same routes therefore there comes a time when you come across a route you have not driven for some time or only driven a few times. This happened to me today. I was scheduled to drive the 271/2712 these go out to Devices via Melksham. The last time I drove these was before I started on National Express so it must be over six years ago so you can imagine I was a little apprehensive about it. Anyway I asked a few drivers and also used Google maps to 'drive' the route and much to my surprise drove it tonight without any problems and even ran on time.

Storm Cam

With the weather people predicting the extreme weather  tonight and tomorrow I thought it was a good time to try out the web cam. You can see it here http://90.220.85.65:8888/
The camera is looking towards the Midsomer Norton railway which is on the hill.