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This is crazy and totally unnecessary, and you know, I don't hang all the blame on the driver.
It is common for bus drivers to switch between single and double deckers both those with low bridge design and standard height varieties, additionally, they often did, if not nowadays, get sent on a route with which they were unfamiliar in a bus, but which they may use all the time in a lower vehicle, car for example. The combination of familiarity with vehicle and familiarity with route could easily lead to the implications of the bridge restriction going right over the driver's head, (No pun intended), when the two factors coincide.
I was sent on a 'Special' many years ago, with a double decker, there was no specified route, so I went the way I knew, fortunately, I spotted the bridge warning sign, and it did register, leaving me the option to divert round it.
'But there but for the grace', I say.
After these incidents have continually occured since long before my time on the road. Is it not long overdue for all bridges and high vehicles to have a fail safe interface system, that prevents an overheight vehicle from even getting past the last safe exit before a bridge?. If the bridge is arched, the system could indicate safe positioning.
I am sorry if my comparison causes any upset to anyone, but, in one respect, it is like these child abuse cases, the authorities are always hiding behind the defence that lessons will be learned, and we must ensure that it never happens again, but it does, repeatedly and so do buses, which I think are mostly on 'specials' or school runs, continue to hit bridges.
Wake up some of you 630 odd 'pocket liners', stop skimming off the revenue you cream off the working people to over endow yourselves, and put some of it into providing safeguards for the traveling public whether they be under or on these bridges. The technology is available, use it.
When it is so easy, and relatively cheap to ' Plan out the human error element in such a critical area. That should, without a question be a priority issue.
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18th October 2008, 16:42
