Oracle
Established Member
Local radio says that a DD bus hit a railway vbridge in the Yapton area near Barnham and lost its roof.
It's odd how passengers who pay for a rail ticket and then get a rail replacement service get a vastly less safe service that has the following safety disbenefits:It was a Rail Replacement Double Decker and the bridge is underneath Barnham Station (Yapton Rd). Apparently the roof is right off. The Road is still closed. Dont know if anybody was hurt.
It's odd how passengers who pay for a rail ticket and then get a rail replacement service get a vastly less safe service that has the following safety disbenefits:
1) Drivers do not require any route knowledge whatsoever
2) Drivers may, and often do, ask passengers for directions
3) Vehicles regularly go 'out of guage' and hit lineside (Err, I mean roadside) obstructions
4) Inferior crashworthiness. Oddly, there are rules preventing trains from running on the main line that are infinitely more crashworthy than buses that are allowed to operate.
5) Drivers that require very little training in comparison to train drivers
And that's before you come to the other undesirable elements such as leaving early, and generally being crap.
I hope everyone is alright, and I hope that there is an investigation as thorough as if it was a train incident. That means the road should be closed for a week, and I expect to see an interim report on the internet in a couple of days. If it was a sane world, drivers would require route knowledge, but sadly they don't. If they did this would not have happened! But, of course, as it was a road incident, the 'powers that be' will have no desire to prevent it happening again. Shameful.
And that's before you come to the other undesirable elements such as leaving early, and generally being crap.