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A404 Amersham Road (Google Maps)Cyclist "almost ran off the road" by bus driver says they feel lucky to be alive after frightening incident
A cyclist in Buckinghamshire feared serious injury or death when a bus driver "scared the s***" out of him when he was "almost ran off the road".
Steve Davis, 70, told the Bucks Free Press how he had been riding an e-bike at around 15mph on Amersham Road A404 in Hazlemere on Sunday 28 May when the driver of a Carousel Buses vehicle dangerously overtook him, "way too close for comfort" and almost forced him into the kerb to avoid being crushed by the vehicle.
The 70-year-old said he took a moment to compose himself and soon after caught up with the driver at a nearby bus stop, asking for an explanation about the incident, only to allegedly be told by the driver: "Well, I didn't hit you, did I?" and that the footpath is a shared-use path that he could have used.
"I did respond telling him I have every right to travel on a road and that he should pass with plenty of room in case I need to suddenly manoeuvre around potholes etc," Steve told the local press.
"It is not a joke to put the fear of god into a cyclist without giving any regard for my safety. I have no safety shield around me or air bags for protection, just my skin and bones to damage.
"Had I been unable to avoid collision at this point I feel that serious personal damage or even death may have been inevitable. Bus drivers who endanger pedestrians and cyclists shouldn't be driving 10-tonne buses around."
The incident was reported to the police and Carousel Buses but the outcome of both is not yet known. road.cc contacted Carousel Buses for comment but had not heard back at the time of publication.
Back in February, a cyclist in London spoke out about what they called "bullyish" bus driving following an incident which prompted a Transport for London investigation.
The incident, featured in our Near Miss of the Day series, saw road safety campaigner Lauren O'Brien overtaken before being squeezed towards the kerb by a bus driver as they pulled into a stop immediately after.
"I don't want to get squished by a bus, so I'm going to have to make a quick decision to brake, get out the way of the bus before I have a collision," she said. "It just winds you up so much because it's bullyish behaviour, you have no option but to brake or you're gonna get hit by a bus, so they're putting you in this horrible, impossible situation where you've got to just get out their way – which shouldn't be the case at all."
> Driver "used bus as a weapon" against cyclist, loses appeal over sacking
Transport for London's head of bus operations, Rosie Trew, told road.cc: "Driving that endangers cyclists or pedestrians is unacceptable and far from the required standard of our bus drivers."
In the same month, police in Swindon investigated an alleged road rage attack which witnesses say saw a cyclist punched to the floor in front of his son by a Stagecoach bus driver who had tried to knock the adult rider off his bike after becoming "impatient" at the pair not using a cycle lane.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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22 comments
I think sometimes I want have a hammer with me - just a demostration of it will force drivers to do a better job....
Luckily Timmy Mallet is a keen cyclist!
Hi @road.cc could you be in contact with Bucks Council - they will be the Transport Authority and could be doing more to regulate their public transport providers.
Bucks Council - they will be the Transport Authority and could be doing more to regulate their public transport providers
But they won't- they, like the police, can't be bothered until there's a lot of cyclist blood on the road, when they will direct their efforts into the story that it's the cyclist's fault.
https://upride.cc/incident/px62cea_stagecoach42_uwlcrossclosepass/
https://upride.cc/incident/p21sra_schoolbus_closepassuwlcross/
https://upride.cc/incident/px12dnu_stagecoach40bus_closepass/
https://upride.cc/incident/px12eez_stagecoach41_closepass/
https://upride.cc/incident/ua5013_kirkbylonsdalecoaches_closepass/
https://upride.cc/incident/yj60kgzar12way_brethertonsarchwaybuses_closepass/
The first really bad offence by Stagecoach was before I got the camera. I caught the bus up at the stop, and the b*****d driver simply said "I didn't hit you, so I can't have been too close". A couple of elderly ladies had alighted at the stop and came up to me saying they had seen the alarming close pass. No Blood, No Offence is what b*****d Lancashire Constabulary thinks- so there was no response or action in any of the above cases- but they have taken that belief further: I have been hit twice (not by a bus or lorry), when the police went for the 'only a momentary loss of concentration' dodge (not quite as inventive as the ScotFilth one: the driver says he can't remember it, so we can't do anything). The next (most people have already seen this many times!) one is where LC claimed to have taken action but now claim to be unable to tell me whether they even know what action was taken but they're definitely not informing me anyway, and the case is now at the Information Tribunal with a lot of telling delaying action by the Information Commissioner
https://upride.cc/incident/4148vz_travellerschoicecoach_closepass/
After the offence Traveller's Choice changed the registration of that bus. Suspicious!
There is no part of the A404 where the footpath is shared use.
photo at the head of the article may well be the A404, but clearly not where the incident occured as there is no footpath.
Clearly recklessly endangering someone because you disagree with their actions is not appropriate. I bet certain people will not be as keen to talk about a vigilante bus driver as they are to label others vigilante cyclists
That's also not vigilantism by the bus driver as they were not trying to enforce any known law. The correct term would be violent criminal.
"that the footpath is a shared-use path that he could have used"
Lots of comments in the Bucks press article saying the cyclist should have been using the shared use path - but that appears to be a load of nonsense. There doesn't appear to be any cycling infrastructure on the A404 at that location:
https://goo.gl/maps/P28LfM5q3uqCouhM7
More to the point, under what possible reality is "not using the shared use path", even if there was one, a justification for deliberately driving your bus in a manner likely to cause alarm, if not actual injury or death should either cyclist or bus driver make an error?
well that was a very depressing read.
And the first comment
Hang on - cyclists are a menace to other road users so you'll run the [cyclist] over? Erm...
quite before his subsequent comment about rolling coal should he encounter any. this driver needs taking off the road.
Worse than some of the stuff I've seen in the DM comments section
What they all meant was "Gerroff the road!".
Then they would complain about "bl00dy cyclists riding on the footpath!"
I often wonder what my grandad, who was a bus driver, would make of the standard of bus drivers around here now. Arriva are atrocious, and I have to cycle past their depot. Been close passed multiple times on a bend just down from the depot, and every time as you would expect I catch them up at the lights at the end of the road. Then there is the fact one of them not so long ago managed to forget a double decker didn't fit under the bridge opposite this same junction.
Generally I've found the ones who do the scheduled routes pretty decent as a rule, it's usually the coaches doing the school run in the morning who are the worst for dodgy/pointless overtakes
A problem we have is a lot of "fast track" dedicated bus lanes that are signed as no cyclists, with cyclists expected to use a shared path. In rush hour there are obviously a lot of pedestrians so it is common sense to use the bus lane (buses being about every 10-15mins, so largely it's empty). I have had a number of almost certainly deliberate close punishment passes for using the bus lane, despite me not holding them up at all, and a safe pass being possible. Their standards are generally low though, and last week one thought it a good idea to overtake me as I was crossing a roundabout on a 40mph dual carriageway. Part of that issue is the sh*t infrastructure, as there is a cycle lane but it disappears at the roundabouts.
Even then it can get complicated. My local company in Renfrewshire has a few depots. I've found the ones who operate out of the Inchinnan pretty good and patient. Meanwhile the Johnstone crews are pretty bullish when on the roads. They're the ones who regularly forced me off the road.
Did you add it to the car crashes into building thread ?
I get in enough trouble just commenting!
https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/20759463.overy-street-dartford-bus-cr...
I find it a useful thread to point people to when they go on about insurance.
Could a cyclist cause this amount of damage ?
Ah, that charming old line, last heard in this vicinity last month when a bus driver was following Mrs H up a hill literally inches off her back wheel, clearly punishing her for not quite managing to stay at 20 mph on a 5% gradient. Upon being remonstrated with he replied, "I didn't hit her, when I hit her you'll know about it." (Tfl as usual said they would investigate but won't disclose any outcome).
Presumably these people would be happy if one followed them around waving a knife in their face or throwing punches that missed them by inches, on the basis that one didn't actually touch them?
Poor analogy - that would be threatening them with an assault whereas it's common knowledge that telling people to move or else while in a vehicle is just delivering a safety announcement.
No, you'd want to e.g. be getting frisky with a strimmer behind then as they were walking along, telling them to shift or else... I mean - you'd not want to...