Move down inside and STAY THERE! (part two)

Cogidubnus commented on the last blant, and my reply is a tad long, so I decided to make it a fresh Blant entry :)

I'm well aware of the fact that some (not all by any stretch of the imagination) other drivers allow this to slide.

No offence, but that's their problem, not mine - I'm not a copper or a driving examiner, after all; if they want a DSA covert examiner to stop the bus, and revoke their licence on the spot for "Unsafe Driving Practices" (which HAS happened to a few bus drivers in the south east London area in the recent past), then that's their risk, and let's all hope that this happens sooner than later for the offending drivers involved - I say that in all sincerity: Dangerous driving is exactly that, and when one has upwards of 75 passengers' lives and well-being in your hands, lack of concentration on the job at hand does not bear thinking about.

Hell, I even tell folks to step back and wait until the next stop before they try to talk to me - especially when they insanely stick their faces against the assault screen and yell even louder than before I told them to wait! If I have to, I'll keep banging away about this until I'm blue of face, and others are blue of ear: It to do with safety, ride comfort, reduction of risk, and plain common sense, after all. You wouldn't, after all, allow someone in the front seat of your car to block your vision, would you? Of course not. You like your car the way it is, rather than resembling a metal concertina. At the very least, you MUST keep back so that the driver doesn't accidentally let the bus cross the kerb-line; at best, your ears'll get a hefty beating from the grinding sound the bus bottom makes as it scrapes the kerb stones, but at much much worse, the screams of the people at the bus stop he just ran over because you blocked his vision will stay with you for a considerably longer time.

This is the problem that passengers in the main don't think about when they want to know the following:

• Does the bus call at (name a station)


• Does the bus stop outside (name a landmark)


• What time will we get there?


• Are we there yet (NO! Not now, not the two hundred times they've already asked, and not until we bloody get there! It's rush hour traffic for pities sake!)


• and so on...

Of course, there is always the one in a billion who actually waits until we got to the next stop before pestering us with questions better left to Priests and Police than lowly bus drivers, but hey, we gotta have some comic relief from time to time ("Fastest way to top yourself? Easy. Go to the cake shop, ask them to pour hundreds and thousands over you. Bingo. Topped" Cue instant nutter on the bus, of course - time for a fast Code Red radio call!)

Anyhow, now you see why it was a fresh Blant to reply to Cogidubnus