Bus just driven right over my planted verge!!!

[thekingfisher]

I know this sounds like a lady garden type thread but its not!
We live on a little lane which is only 1 car wide other than where our drive comes into the road. We have a verge which I have put granite rocks along the edge of and the verge is planted with bushes and various rock plans.

The fxxxxxxg no 84 has just come along and as there was something else coming - rather than wait for it to pass it has driven right over 1 corner of my verge - completely squashing 1 whole plant and driving over the rock.

This is not the first time it has happened - BUT I happened to be standing there and saw it happen.

AIBU to be furious and so cross ...I lovingly tend it and its so unfair and thoughtless - its also a stupid double decker which is another rant altogether because it really is too big to be on the roads where we live....

[thekingfisher]

[eurochick]

Write to the bus operator and complain.

[GoEasyPudding]

Time to get some bigger rocks!

[OldGreyWiffleTest]

Yep, I'd complain. The buses/lorries are always doing this at the top of our road, over the grass.

[Paiviaso]

YANBU.

[Faithless12]

Yanbu. Complain, did you get the reg. no? Or take note of the time it passed. Tbh it says a lot about the driver if he didn't wait on a lane which isn't wide enough for two vehicles to safely pass.

[skybluepearl]

put some sharp nails in the bed?
or maybe just ring to the bus company. Do it today.

[squeakytoy]

Did the bus have to take evasive action to avoid the oncoming car. Rather a squashed plant than a RTA I suppose...

[WenTheEternallySurprised]

YANBU. I'd be pretty pissed too. Can I add to the arse-kicking that the busdriver deserves some similar punishment for the dickheads who are too bloody lazy to park their cars in the village car park and actually walk their precious little darlings for the 30 seconds it takes to cross the road and access our new playground, which is on one of our village greens?

Instead they park either half on the pavement alongside the playground so anyone with a buggy/shopper trolley/dog can't get past or on the fucking village green itself so churning up the grass into mud and taking the piss out of the painstaking efforts that locals and parish councillors take to care for our environment.

Am I ever cross about this? Does it show? In fact, would you and I BU to confront the offending drivers?

[ripsishere]

Neither of you are BU.
Wen, I'd be inclined to contact the local police station. I saw two PCSO talking to one mum in her open topped Beatle about the way she had parked.
DDs school insist that you park in the local library and walk. Apparently there was a lot of humphing when it was introduced.
OP, contact the bus depot. They should refund the cost of your plants. I know that isn't the principal, but still.

[thekingfisher]

I have contacted the bus company - frankly they are a nightmare. I travel up and down the road loads and the bus drivers are very rude generally - they never stop to pull in always drive right up to you so you have to reverse to the passing places.

The other lorry had stopped to let bus pass - but should have reversed or indeed the bus should have waited - but they are always in a rush....

I want them to come and replant the plant - they are only aubretia but very weel established and has taken about 3 years to get looking as lovely as they have so a new one isnt going to look anywhere near as good. I just want them to stop driving over everything......

[ripsishere]

Involve your local paper, get a sad faced photo and a pointing finger.

[AKMD]

:( What did the bus company say?

[PandaWatch]

YADNBU!

I second the local paper option - sad face, holding squashed plant, pointing at rock.

I would also seriously consider the nail option, but then I'd be worried that someone would step on them. Although no one should be walking on there either!

[thekingfisher]

Oooh I could rustle up a really good 'sad' face and I could polish my pointing finger...perhaps I'll get the village newsletter involved - now that would put the cat amongst the pigeons!!!!

Co owner is going to call me back in the next 'day or so' apparently. I said I would have thought he would want to speak to me sooner than that...!

[Ormiriathomimus]

Bastard!

Write to paper. You are also right about the double-decker. Why can't they use one of those little shuttle type buses ? Round here that is all you see on the country roads.

[Ormiriathomimus]

Get bigger rocks.

[PandaWatch]

Yes yes! Village newsletter is good. I bet loads of other people are annoyed about them and you can all band together.

I would also be concerned about the bus drivers being so quick to mount pavements. Massive potential for a nasty pedestrian-related accident, especially for children :(

[WenTheEternallySurprised]

rip, our force wouldn't want to know! The local stations are either the far-too-busy one in the nearby city or a very-part-time one man jobbie in a neighbouring village. If we see one PC in the village every 6 months we're lucky.

I guess that the plus side is that nothing ever happens here so there's no need for a police presence so I mustn't complain.

[Theas18]

Just check you actually own the verge. We have a foot or so of verge that isn't actually part of our land- but we mow it etc (it's by the road, no footpath)

[Ormiriathomimus]

My parents live on a reasonable narrow single-lane road. They had a long boundary along the road with a metal fence on some stretches and a hedge at others. People have driven on the verge so far and so often that the hedge has started to die back and one bit of the fence was undermined.

[AKMD]

Wen I thought that little villages were hotbeds of grisly serial murders, blackmail, drug-dealing and fraud blame Midsomer Murders

[WenTheEternallySurprised]

AKMD, nope, thank god! Here it's more a case of thanks in the parish magazine to the married couple who funded a new village sign or an appeal to locals to help out with clearing the weeds from one of the ponds!

[sweetkitty]

YANBU

We live in a cul de sac, it's quite wide but all the gardens are open plan but we have the biggest front garden just half a field of grass as we have never had money to do anything about it.

The number of cars that drive over a bit if the grass, there's enough room for 3 cats to pass on the street yet they will drive up mount the kerb and onto the grass

Also the kids play on the front garden even though there's loads of room.

Hopefully next year we will get a fence and some nice trees, I long for nice trees.

[AKMD]

Borrrrrrring. You should stir things up a bit. Sharpen that pitchfork and all that. Or tangle up a dead body in the pond weed, weighted down with rocks, the day before the pond de-weeding session. Or get an enormous elastic band of the kind used at activity centres and stretch it across the road to ping back the next unsuspecting bus. Or dig up all the Chief Gardener's carrots one night, turn them into soup and then plant back just the tops so they don't know for a few days, thereby starting a blood feud.

You are not making the most of your villager status.