Buses repeatedly hitting pedestrians in London

[HollyRoseHill]

I am concerned about the rising number of buses hitting pedestrians in London.

Most recently in March, a 12-year-old dancer crossing the street near her home in south London was killed by a double-decker bus www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12794923; or the early morning October 2010 accident that killed and dragged for over a mile a medical student in Hampstead www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23884561-bus-driver-in-death-crash-case-i-didnt-know-that-id-hit-anyone.do; and this tragic story of a father crossing Oxford Street, during the Christmas shopping season of December 2009, who miraculously survived and is compaigning to bring public awareness to this issue www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/oxford_street_battle_by_dad_who_cheated_death_1_847571.

Is it a vehicle design flaw? Improper driver trainer? Why is CCTV footage disappearing? To whom are the bus companies responsible? How many people must die before a thorough investigation of this alarmingly frequent occurance is undertaken?

Spidookly I'm not sure if that comment about beeping was aimed at me? The horn in the car is to warn people of danger, so it a woman and a pram are suddenly in front of me (on a road, about 100m from a crossing, not looking for the cars that are, inevitably, driving down that road..) as I'm driving at 25mph, why is it worng for me to beep my horn so she's gets of of the bloody way?

Of course we all walked before we drove, but that does not mean that people can step out in front of moving cars, does it?!

Also being "cavalier" on the roads when you are driving a bus is pretty much the same as setting out deliberately to kill people.

If I get cavalier with a hunting rifle and someone gets shot I don't get to claim it was a unforeseesble accident.

Buses are dangerous to soft, frail human bodies. In a clash between the two the onus must always be on the person in charge of the potentially lethal weapon to make sure they are wielding it safely.

Sometimes it's nobody's fault. But the assumtion that if a bus hits a pedestrian they deserved to die is a disgusting one only made by ape-like human impostors.

So a woman and baby are suddenly in front of your car, and your priority is to warn them to get out if your way?

You shouldn't be on the road until you learn not to drive lime a sociopath.

When a pedestrian unexpectedly steps out in front of you there is another, much more important, tool you should be using - your BRAKE!

You don't need to warn a mother you are about to mow her baby down if you take steps to make sure you are not about to kill a baby by slowing the fuck down.

And yes, people can and will walk out in front of cars, because that is how we are made. If you can't drive in such a way as to accommodate that then you are too dangerous to be on the road.

Who said that pedestrians deserve to die? I actually don't drive so wlak everywhere. Which means I actually have pretty good road sense. I don't walk out in front of cars/buses or anything else that is going to possibly kill me.
I think the onus should be on the pedestrian, not the bus driver. It's a little bit easier to control your own body than it is to control a fast moving heavywieght bus. It would be different if the buses were driving along the pavements, where pedestrains aren't expecting them to be there.

My spelling/typing is awful today

Sometimes, sadly, there will be nothing a driver can do.

But yes, I think the onus was on him to prevent killing that woman if possible.

Do you think the fact that she made an error while distracted means that she deserved to die?

I don't think anyone has said people deserved to die, that is ridiculous. It just needs to be recognised that padestrians have responsibilities too.

There was an incident recently where a young boy was chased by a gang and he ran into the road, into the path of a bus and was killed. Unbelievably horrific and horrendous in so many ways. The bus driver was not at fault. He could not stop in time. The boy was murdered by the gang.

But I've seen people just step out into the road for no reason other than they want to get to the other side but have not looked, are on their phones etc. If there happens to be a car coming then it does not have the magical power of just stopping dead, we learn about stopping distances for a reason.

So the defenseless person must bear the responsibilty for violent interactions with speeding machines, and those controlling the machines none?

Jesus fucking Christ.

If the machine is hard to stop then it is even more important that the person in charge use it safely.

Pedestrians bear the responsibilty by putting their life on the line, but you want to be able to slag off the dead, justify their death as no more than they deserved, and exonerate their killer without even checking whether they could have avoided killing another person.

And I;ve just seen that last message Spid. I did brake as hard as I bloody could, do you think I'd just plough on regardless?! If someone steps out 3 m in front of you and you are driving at (under the speed lmit) 25 m an hour, you cannot stop in 3m.

Clearly you are out for an arguement, and I shall no longer bite. But if the world is full of padestrians with your attitude then maybe we should all consider if we are safe to drive on the road. As I'm not sure how many rear end collisions I could take as I constantly slam on my brakes to let the person on their phone who as stepped out without looking because that is what humans do.

FFS!

Yes, because there's just no downside currently for pedestrians hit by buses, is there?

Ffs. Thankfully the law is more humane than you bunch of psychos.

It is becoming clear why it is so hard to secure convictions for death by dangerous driving. Enough people think that cars are big enough to see and anyone who is hit by one on the road had it coming, regardless of driver behaviour.

He did fail to prevent her getting hit, presumably because he has no choice.

But still she died because he hit her with his bus.

And that's fucking terrible, and sad and awful. And blaming her for a momentary lapse in concentration and saying stupid things about how buses are big enough to see is vile. A young woman lost her life doing totally normal things that people do. She thought she was safe, she was wrong. If there are more things we can do to prevent errors like this happening in the future (eg non-silent buses in busy urban areas) then we must consider them.

The complacent refusal to even consider that it is a problem if people are being killed by buses is essentially to say that you are OK with those deaths.

The way I see is that the time I crossed the road (with my toddler and baby in pushchair) at a crossing whern the green man was lit up and the beeping sound was audible - I was in the right and the twat high school boy racer was in the wrong when he continued to drive over the crossing narrowly missing me. But the time when I took a risk crossing the road without looking properly and clipped the back of my heel on the car that failed to stop as I was only visible when it was too late (I was 19 and a fool) I was very much to blame.

Drivers should always drive defensively and especially in residential areas, at appropriate speeds to avoid accidents. Bus drivers should do the same but they can only do so much and us pedestrians (I can't drive) have to act responsibly to keep ourselves safe as well - this is not an buses evil pedestrians good situation we all have a responsibility. Drivers have an awesome responsibilty as their vehicles are capable of killing but there are humans involved on both side of the equasion and demonising either side will not make our roads safer. Education, road design commitment to policing all have a part to play.

I never said no pedestrian was ever responsible.

Driver mistakes and pedestrian mistakes are not equivalent.

You bear more responsibility when you are driving than when you are walking, because when you drive you pose a far greater dangers to others than when you walk.

I am not ok with any death on the road. i lost my 17 year old brother in a car accident, so do have some experince here.
But, buses are big enough to see. I don't know the circumstances of the accident but if a momentary lapse in concentration on her part caused her own death, then I don't see how blaming the bus driver is helping anyone.
Everyone who uses the road, driver or pedestrian, needs to be fully aware of the risks and dangers at all times.

Spidookly - I feel I have a very very big responsibility to cross the road responsibly as I am frequently with my 3 children all of whom are learning road safety from me - As I have been involved in road safety education with children in London I know that children need to be taught how to cross busy double parked roads safely and their responsibility for their safety has to be drummed into them not dismissed. Your attitude worries me greatly.

I never said, and do not think, that the driver was at fault ( if things happened as you describe).

I just said that the onus was on him to prevent the accident if he could, even where the pedestrian was at fault.

You can teach children to be safe on the road but then teach drivers that they must always be responsible when they are driving, and that pedestrians are unpredicable by nature.

Trying to create an equivalence between someone driving a bus and some strolling to the shops with their mates in terms of responsibility for road safety is unrealistic and unfair.

There has to be less tolerance for human error when driving a bus than when walking around.

Driver error has more serious consequences for others and should be treated differently than the errors of ordinary people walking about.

Expecting pedestrians to be as vigilant as drivers is nonsense. People must be able to walk safely around their towns without being in a constant state of heightened awareness to traffic. Because people matter more than cars, and life is nicer where walking is respected and traffic made secondary to gettng about on foot.

What I don't understand Spid and I will stop posting after this I promise - is how you keep talking about 'cars' and then 'people' - when people drive cars - I entirely accept and agree that in the hierarchy pedestrians should be prioritised. But there are 'people' in cars as well and in buses and they do need to drive respectfully and carefully but that does not negate people on bikes and on foot from having to be aware of their own safety and others because a careless pedestian can cause a vehicle to swerve and endanger themselves in avoiding a collision. We all have a responsibility.

A bus is big enough to see if you are looking at it. If it is behind you, and silent, then you may not know it's there until it's too late.

A 16 year old girl was killed by a bus in these circumstances where I live a few years ago. Thankfully people here didn't blithely accept that she was a dozy bitch who had it coming.

In fact road design experts pointed out that the street where she died was designed in such a way (with dropped kerb) as to suggest a pedestrianised area. Most traffic is not allowed on that street, only buses. So the effect was to lull the pedestrian into acting as though there was no traffic, when in fact the small amount of traffic there was was very dangerous. Not only was it dangerous, but it was almost silent, so another warning of possible danger was missing.

So instead of simplistically (and nastily) presuming the victim of the accident was at fault, a careful analysis of the situation showed that the affordances of the street were such that an accident like that was all but inevitable.

And things were changed. Changed to accommodate human beings and how they actually behave, not how a bunch of pissed off motorists want them to behave.

Refusing to accept even the suggestion that there could be things we could do to make our roads safer and more pleasant for pedestrians (ie everyone) and insisting that everything is fine as it is and people who die on the road are necessary collateral damage seems like willful obtuseness to me.