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news
Harlow texting bus driverVideo: Bus driver sacked after being filmed apparently using mobile by helmet-cam cyclist
A bus driver filmed by a helmet-cam-equipped cyclist apparently using a mobile phone has been sacked.
According to the Harlow Star, the Roadrunners Coaches vehicle was filmed in the Seymours area of Harlow on September 11. The bus was moving and had passengers on board at the time.
The company initially said its managers believed the driver was holding a ticket module and so would take no action against him.
However, according to a spokeswoman for Roadrunners a later review of the evidence led to a decision to sack the driver, who will not fight the decision.
“He told us that it was a module but he shouldn’t be [holding] that while driving anyway,” she said.
A spokesman for Essex Police said: “Enquiries are continuing and we have served a notice on the company to identify the driver.”
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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54 comments
Not sure I'm with you. I guess you're on of the people who think it's acceptable to ruin a mans life for the sake of a quick ego boost. How sad.
I think you're really "freespirit", because there can't be two such big f*ckwits in the south of England, and I claim my £10.00
Sorry you've completey lost me.. You sound a bit confused.
The driver is an alleged professionally trained driver. He is driving a vehicle with members of the public on it. He therefore has a duty of care to those individuals. I am fed up seeing bus drivers driving one handed (I was taught to keep both hands on the wheel) using mobiles (currently illegal) jumping red lights and their companies not reigning this behaviour in.
As sad as it is to see someone loose their job, we do not know if the driver was already being progressed along the disciplinary route and this was the final straw or if the company treats this behaviour as gross misconduct.
I agree dave - but as long as communter goes home happy and tells his wife what a great guy he is now the worlds a little safer thats all that matters I guess. If cars had cams on how cyclists bad behaviour could you see - probably a lot. Share the road.
No. I'd actually agree with you. I'm not happy at the idea of someone losing their job.
I'm also not happy at the profileration of cameras recording bloody everything, everywhere all the time.
On the other hand it seems like a smart move to have one in your car or on your bike to gather evidence... always assuming your not someone blindly committing a crime.
It's a shame he's lost his job, but I think there's only one person to blame for that and it's not the guy who reported him.
Also IMO the suggestion that it's a disgrace that he's been sacked seems to shore up the idea that it's just one of those little things everyone does and there shouldn't be any real consequences to it. It implies that this standard of driving is still socially acceptable, and we as a society need to decide whether it is or not. If it isn't, there need to be significant consequences to doing it until people get it through their heads, same as drink driving.
Also IMO the suggestion that it's a disgrace that he's been sacked seems to shore up the idea that it's just one of those little things everyone does and there shouldn't be any real consequences to it. It implies that this standard of driving is still socially acceptable, and we as a society need to decide whether it is or not. If it isn't, there need to be significant consequences to doing it until people get it through their heads, same as drink driving.[/quote]
+ 1
I'd actually agree with all that you said Chuck.
I'm confused. Do you agree with cameras or not?
Yes and no.
I think their proliferation is in general bad for society. I don't like the erosion of relative anonymity in the public sphere.
On the other hand, given this is happening, it's like any other arms race: you may as well arm yourself.
If I ruled the world, they wouldn't be allowed for anyone. (Un)fortunately I don't...
Vocational licence holder and Conduct Regulations apply to him (use of mobile phones by bus drivers has been illegal since before mobile phones were invented) bus drivers, by law, should only be driving, when bus is in motion, No reading, or talking to anyone without good reason - nem con
Nice link, shocking reading. The overiding impression is that the police simply don't care unless somebody actually gets smashed.
With this attitude its no surprise that we see cyclists taking action against drivers themselves (stoping them and having strong words etc.) rather than reporting to the police.
I keep suggesting that the police should have bobbies on bikes undercover - the amount of footage they'd get of people using phones, smoking weed, and generally totally disregarding the highway code would make them a fortune at very little expense.
@YorkshireMike
Yes, that would be a good idea, but the flip side is they'd catch a lot of cyclists breezing through red lights and cycling the wrong way up one-way streets.
So what's wrong with that? Catching the cyclists' misdemeanours that is.
To my mind, anyone who breaks the rules themselves forfeits the right to complain about others doing it.
Totally agree with you, Flobble. My irony clearly didn't come across in my post.
@Hampstead_bandit...I had a similar when I very politely pointed out to a cyclist he was going the wrong way up a one-way street..."f*ck off you w*nker" was the reply. What a great ambassador for cyclists everywhere.
+1
+1
I have often said that if the police issued every regular commuter a goPro with the amount of fixed penalties that they could issue it would pay for the cameras in no time.
So what if they also pick up bike riders behaving illegaly? Equality for all. Let us be quite clear, just as the minority of drivers are fools, so there is a minority of cyclists who are also. But thanks to perception bias you see the bad behaviour and not the good. Hence you don't ever see a sensible Audi driver...
One of the common gripes that gets levelled at cyclists is that they are all red light jumping and if these members of our community were made to stop at these, just as we want cars out of our ASLs then it might generate more sympathy with our friends in their metal boxes.
And yet . .. :
http://www.croydoncyclist.co.uk/new-police-guidelines-for-video-footage/
Feeling more and more like I should get a helmet cam.........
Then again I'd end up contacting the police every time I ride. At the moment I rarely bother as nothing comes of it.
So what would happen if cyclists started giving the coppers footage of ordinary motorists on their phones? If they took it seriously, half the drivers in the country would be getting points, fines, whatever.
Is this a bad thing?
Yes, I mean if all cyclists started doing this, what possible consequences could there be?
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