Since I started working for a large bus company (I won't mention the company name, however I will mention that I worked for First Group for 5 years, no accidents, clean record, even attendance record and only moved to the other company because the pay and conditions were better) I have never seen a manager so many times over petty stupid things. The other day I was in for a DP with regards to an accident that he had deemed blame worthy, so I had to prove that it wasn't my fault.
What got my back up is the fact that I have never ever even had a formal interview of any kind in my working life and now I was in for a DP.
What else got my back up is the fact that I had reported the accident on the bus to cover myself and the company I work for.
Further more, they had not done an investigatory interview to assitane whether or not there was a case to answer. So from the start out of procedure.
The story goes like this...
Driving a bus through a small town centre, 3-4 passengers on. Driving at 14 mph, a safe distance from the vehicle in front, lights on green, I glance at the internal mirror briefly and then look back at the road, a car in front stops, I apply the brakes and not much happens, so I go again for the brakes a little harder and somewhat stop the bus quicker than normal, a passenger making their way from the rear of the bus to the front of the bus with the intention of alighting at the next bus stop somewhat tumbles down the bus.
I stop at the next bus stop and check that the passenger is ok, he said yes and alighted without any problem, I report the platform incident as required by company procedure. I also raido'd the depot to inform them of the incident, I obtained a witness name and address who totally agreed it was the car in front who was the blame.
So we watched the cctv from the bus at least 30 times and was in the meeting for nearly 3 hours. The depot manager reckoned that the car in front had had its brake lights on for 5 seconds and that I had only reacted at the last minute, I could not prove that I had initially gone for the brakes already once as the cctv on that particular vehicle doesn't show on the cctv when I had applied the brakes. He also said that I was only driving with one hand which he believed made me not in full control of the vehicle.
We somewhat went around in circles watching the same part of the cctv again and again and the manager was quite reluctant to believe my side of the story, he accepted that there are distractions on the road and that I could have been looking at something, to which is a fair comment as I was probably looking in my mirror or looking at the bus stop I was going to stop at.
The way in which I had to prove I had braked initially was by watching the cctv image of the vehicle (front view) and trying to use the bus shadow as my evidence, the speed of the vehicle seemed consistent to when I had to hit the brakes harder so it looked like I had not gone for the brakes initially.
I also tripped the manager up, I asked him if he had ever watched any cctv of my driving before, to which he said, yes once, when you wanted me to check something. I asked him if he had seen me driving with one hand then to which he didn't reply but just looked at me funny. If driving with one hand is so dangerous according to him why did he not take action a few months ago when he saw me driving with one hand then? lol
Eventually I got the 'NO FURTHER ACTION TO BE TAKEN.'
But what a ball ache of a week I have had.
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Topic: Had my first DP the other day lol (Read 1087 times)