Posted by Les Faber in When I run across something that really gets under my skin, I tend to want to write about it. In this particular case David Reevely (an Ottawa-based journalist) came close to getting run over by a bus operated by our local transportation company (OC Transpo). He wrote about the experience on his blog.
An excerpt follows:
I was biking eastbound on Iris Street, and stopped at a red light at Woodroffe Avenue at about 7:50 p.m. on July 18. A bus pulled up behind me (bus no. 4061, route 151). When the light turned green, I pedalled hard to get up to speed through the intersection and stay out of the way of the bus; I could see someone waiting at the stop on Iris just east of the intersection and figured the operator would be stopping. The driver must have been accelerating hard, because he pulled the bus just alongside me, then drifted to the right and braked for the stop. If I hadn’t hit my bicycle brakes hard, he’d have sideswiped me. As it was, passengers were staring out the windows, shocked by what had nearly happened. I pulled around to the left of the bus and stopped abreast of the driver’s window while he was picking up the new passenger. I knocked. He turned his head and glared, then opened the window. “What were you thinking?” I asked. “What were you thinking?” he responded, parroting my tone. Then he closed the window, hit the gas, and pulled to the left. Again, I had to get out of the way fast. If the first time was a misjudgment — I don’t think it was, but maybe — the second near-sideswipe was a deliberately aggressive move. You can’t have people like this driving for you. Biking and busing are my two main ways to get around town, but when your staff do things like this to me, I find OC Transpo impossible to defend.
I will take David at his word and assume that his rendition of events is accurate (after all he is in the business of gathering and reporting on facts). It is not very often that someone who is in a position similar to David’s has the wherewithal to actually gather adequate information. DAvid seems to have done that.
OC Transpo has a choice:
- Ignore him and pooh pooh his story
- Come clean and disipline the driver
I won’t say where my vote is going
David has a choice:
- Pursue this via the methods he has been trained to use (hound them until he gets “justice”)
- Go to the Police and file charges
- Both of the above
Again, I won’t say where my vote goes (okay number 3)
Good luck David!
