As I stepped onto the bus I handed the driver the correct fare.
He waved his hand at me, urging me to take my ticket.
He couldn’t actually speak to me because he was on his mobile phone.
‘Charming!’I thought.
I took my seat and fumed to see him continue to talk into his phone as we pulled out into the main road. Admittedly Salthill on a wet cold Saturday morning is not a hotbed of high speed driving, but we had all paid to be driven by him, and not only was he breaking the law, but doing so in a way that could risk both his job and our lives.
By the time I reached my destination I had worked out what I wanted to say to him. There was no point in being aggressive, as that would only get his back up. For all I knew he might have been on the phone to a sick wife, or an ailing parent in an Emergency Room, so I was loathe to judge him too harshly.
Before I walked off the bus I turned to him and calmly said:
“Hi. You know, when we step onto this bus we’re putting our lives in your hands, so it’s a bit scary for us too see you driving while you’re talking on your mobile.”
As I spoke to him my eyes looked over to see that in his lap he was balancing his football pools sheet, while in his other hand he had a pen with which he was doing the pools, leaving, errrr, no hand at all with which to drive the bus.
He then contemptuously snorted wind from his nose, and in my direction exclaimed slowly, impatiently, emphatically:
“Oh. Sweet. God.”
Evidently he felt he had the absolute right to endanger not only us, but other drivers and pedestrians, by driving a bus whilst talking on the phone whilst doing his football pools.
Part of me wanted to report him, but I didn’t, as he’d lose his job, bringing untold suffering upon his family who were, unlike him, innocent.
Instead I gently said:
“When you hit a child in the road, saving your job will be the least of your worries.”
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