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news
Bus on pavement YouTube clipVideo: Tourist bus driver mounts kerb to admonish cyclists
In a breath-taking piece of irresponsible driving a driver for London tourist bus operator Golden Tours has been caught on camera deliberately driving on a pavement in order to block two cyclists whom he felt the need to tell off.
According to the comments on his original YouTube posting, cyclist Ali Choudhry (19) from Ilford, was riding through London with a friend on August 2 when they noticed they were being tailgated by a Golden Tours bus.
“This driver decided to spice things up a bit for us with a blend of typical road rage," said Choudhry. "He tailgated us at literally 3 feet and got angry for being held up for a few seconds but had all the time in the world to stop and vent his fury.”
Choudhry and his friend, who was riding through London for the first time, took refuge on the pavement, but as you can see in the video, the driver also turned off the road to block their path.
He opens the bus doors and begins to shout at the riders until Choudhry points out his video camera.
“I bet he intended to do a lot more but backed off when he saw the camera and the fact i wasn't alone," said Choudhry.
Asked if he had notified the driver's employer, he replies: "Yup. Have already sent them the video link via contact us on their website. I hope they do sort it out as best as they can. The driver really needs to control his irrational anger and what he does as a result of it."
In response to the video being drawn to the company's attention on Twitter, Golden Tours said he was no longer working there:
@DrMoroch0 Hi, thanks for your tweet. The driver in question no longer works for Golden Tours.
— Golden Tours (@GoldenTours) August 15, 2014
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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48 comments
Jimmy Ray Will '... people don't tend to really lose the plot without a little provocation. ' <- are you being serious?
Did you ever see other road-rage vids? It could have been, just maybe, that the driver has been provoked by somebody else, or sick of traffic while being in a hurry, or even holding a grudge against cyclist because of a past incident not involving these 2 guys here.
There was an article here:
http://road.cc/content/news/121958-judge-sends-clear-message-norfolk-man...
Besides, don't you think that somebody with a personality trait such as 'lose the plot with a little provocation' should not be qualified to, amongst others, being a driver?
So many idiots here commenting in favor of the bus driver? What if we turn the situation around and say the cyclist stopped in front of a bus and verbally abused the driver.
No-one with an attitude and/or anger management issues should be allowed to cycle or to drive any kind of vehicle (definitely shouldn't be allowed to work as a driver), as eventually its not the actual circumstances but a tendency to road-rage that will lead to this kind of reaction.
To those asking what did the cyclist do? Well I'm sure in the past history of both the cyclist and the driver more dangerous events occurred and none of them lead to this kind of confrontation. The assumption that there must have been a horrible breach of highway code is just ridiculous.
What you've got to understand here, right, is that if the speed of the bus drops below 50 mph...
You would have thought a pretty simple case of dangerous driving, threats and intimidation by a bus driver with pretty clear evidence toward a couple of cyclists would receive universal condemnation from pretty much all cyclists, but no some trolls on here have still turned this comments section into a pathetic squabble amongst themselves. Unbelievable.
Wow.. you guys really are so blinkered... why is there not footage from before the 'money shot'? I think we all know why really.
There was nothing in the video that could give anyone, even the most nutty of angry bus drivers reason to act in a way that they would surely know would lose them there job... so for me, I am comfortable there was two sides to this.
Does it justify the actions of the bus driver, hell no, but lets not take that holier than though attitude, it makes cyclists look like hypocritical chumps.
As for the comment about the driver being in jail... seriously? The driver got his just deserts, no one was harmed, no one was in danger of being harmed, it was just an angry twit being an angry... but controlled angry twit.
I will say, whilst it is easy to say 'no actions could justify the driver reaction', is that really the case? I'm not so sure... I'm sure there are circumstances that for all of us would cause us toact beyond the law... I'm being an argumentative dick make no mistake, but what if those guys had spent the previous five minutes shouting racist abuse at the driver... or similar... at what point does one persons actions not cause a representative reaction?
However, based on the evidence all we know is that the driver was a dick... I'm just not so keen to act as the executioner without all the background.
I can't be 100% in this case but I'm pretty damn sure that if you start racially abusing someone, even for one minute as opposed to five, the recipient isn't going to come out attempting to reference the highway code.
Well... don't use watching the video with sound on to ruin a perfectly irrational argument... where's the fun in that?
My point is that we don't know all the facts, so whilst I am perfectly comfortable condemning the bus drivers actions, I am not quite willing to pick up a pitch fork and start chasing anyone down the street quite yet.
A comment above talks about what would we think if a cyclist stopped in front of a car and started being abusive to the driver... My natural reaction would be to wonder what the reason for that cyclists to react in such a way... I'd still condemn it, but I'd understand that much like a bus driver, people don't tend to really lose the plot without a little provocation.
This backs up my idea of getting a helmet cam. These idiots need identifying
Few very simple questions.
What are the police doing about it?
Have DVLA confirmed removal of bus category from licence, if not why not or do they condone bus drivers doing this?
Note added to his personal insurance records - this guy is surely high risk?
Stunned as ever.
Granted, the cyclists could have wound up the driver and the footage does not show this. Does not excuse the driver from mounting the footpath? He is after all a highly trained and skilled vehicle operator who can cope with all situations thrown at him rather than use his vehicle to intimidate other road users.
I once had a bus driver roll up to my wheel by about a foot while waiting at a set of lights. I moved off and had him tailgating me for about twenty metres as I fought to hold primary and get past some parked cars, he then performed an illegal overtake and whipped his vehicle in causing the rear of the bus brush my arm and forcing me into the side of a parked car. Catching up with him at the bus stop he said that he had given me plenty of room etc etc and that I was a danger to myself. On reporting, The CTV proved his stunt rather differently. I know that the individual concerned was dealt with as the company's drivers have shown a huge improvement in interacting with cyclists.
It does seem concerning that a lot of bus and coach operators are quite happy to employ individuals that can't cope with driving on heavily congested roads. Maybe a psyc test as well as an interview would be a way forward. Anger Management Issues = No Post.
Typical, had this a few time myself.
These morons don't notice 20 single occupant motor vehicles stopped in front of them, but 1 cyclist ahead sends them into a rage.
Will, it's easy to understand why he was frothing at the mouth so much: there was two of them!
What a c**t.
He should be charged with dangerous driving and be banned from driving any PSV for life.
@Joeinpoole
I was unncessarily dismissive/rude with my first comment, now I think about it. Sorry.
Perhaps the cyclists did do something wrong as well, I have no idea, but I'm not looking at it in terms of a confrontation between cyclist and driver, I am just fed up in general of drivers thinking they can drive onto the pavement. That's wrong on its own, regardless of what went on between driver and cyclists.
No worries ... thanks! I'm confident we're both batting for the same side on this issue anyway.
If a cyclist can be fined for straying over the dividing line on a segregated pavement (as in the New Kent Road case) surely the bus driver should be fined for this?
As with most of these, I want to see the previous few minutes of footage rather than take it at face value with edit choices of the supposedly aggrieved cyclists.
The bus driver is clearly upset by something in the behaviour of the cyclists but nothing they do during the video seems too bad. One of them pulling out to hog the lane while his friend undertakes is not particularly good behaviour. But both of them laughing at having held up the bus is good evidence that they are pleased with themselves for having obstructed him, until they realise he is going to react and suddenly it isn't so funny.
So what else were they up to in the couple of minutes previous?
What a daft comment.
Not really. To quote Baruch Spinoza “No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.”
So what actions by the cyclist makes it legal to drive a bus onto the pavement?
Obviously nothing made that reaction either 'legal' or justified ... and a man has lost his job as a result.
I just wonder what caused that reaction? It must have been something. If the driver suffered road-rage all the time over trivial matters then he probably wouldn't have got the job in the first place. Maybe he wasn't deliberately tailgating the cyclists ... maybe the cyclists deliberately slowed down to obstruct him as much as possible for their own amusement? Who knows? The driver certainly felt that he had been wronged by the cyclists somehow and the video doesn't show what it was.
Really? I see road rage and twatty driving from 'professional' drivers on a daily basis.
Someone without a serious anger management issue / other personality problems would just think they're being c*nts and swear under their breath while slowing down.
Seriously, can you please engage your cognitive faculties to filter out this sort of stuff before applying fingers to keyboard?
Like I and others have said, we don't actually *know* what happened immediately before the incident.
You might want to take your own advice before applying fingers to keyboard next time.
Aren't you getting tired of concocting imaginary reasons for reckless and dangerous drivers to be blameless?
I haven't 'concocted' any imaginary reasons ... unlike your good self. I've just tried to keep an open mind until we know both sides of the story. I'd have thought *that* was the civilised and intelligent thing to do.
But you are welcome to go ahead and spout your one-eyed prejudices with half the information missing.
Yes, you are concocting imaginary reasons. If we can't know what happened beforehand, which we can't, there is no point discussing it. Not that there is anyway unless your aim is to excuse the bus driver.
So the only explanation for you bringing it up is that you want to excuse the bus driver, you're just too cowardly to say so. See: JAQing off.
And yes, it's entirely possible a bus driver is that angry and stupid as to respond to the riding we see with the driving we see. Which is very stupid indeed under any circumstance imaginable.
Why do you have to say "a man"? Is this some sort of weird think-of-the-children thing applied to privileged members of society who are ripe for going to jail?
Speechless.... really...
Anything at all really. I take it you have not read the Highway Code and the Secret Rulebook for Drivers that Joeinpool keeps tucked up his keister?
More to the point, why isn't this criminal in jail?
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