The Big City

I saw the aftermath of a serious accident last weekend. According to the people standing around afterwards, a bus had swerved to avoid a pedestrian in the road outside Holborn tube station. It went crashing over a traffic island, ploughing through the pedestrians standing there before coming to rest against a street light. Several people were trapped under the bus, one woman in her thirties died before she could be taken to hospital. As far as I can tell this sad story wasn’t considered important enough to be reported in any national media. It made second item on the BBC London radio news bulletin.

There are a lot of very bad bus drivers in London. I frequently see them speeding, whizzing through red traffic lights, turning without indicating and ignoring people waiting at bus stops. I’d say it’s a miracle that there aren’t more accidents but actually I suspect that there are more accidents; we just don’t hear about them. A while ago, when I had a Land Rover, I was rammed by a bus, twice, because I was driving in a bus lane. Fair enough in a way, people who drive in bus lanes are tossers, but hardly the behaviour of a responsible public servant.

I expect that the drivers are bad because the management is bad. They probably emphasise speed above safety. Even so, a bus driven by a maniac is a very serious danger to the public and so I felt quite encouraged by the news that Transport for London are working on a system that would automatically limit the speed of buses and taxis. I’m completely in favour of a scheme like this, as long as it only affects buses that I’m not travelling in.

BBC NEWS | England | London | TfL looks at car speed limiters

Another blogger who saw the wreckage