Help the buses stay on schedule
With the high price of gas these days, we’re all trying different ways to save money. Some people have elected to keep their vehicle at home and walk, cycle or take public transportation. That’s a good thing. This can also help reduce traffic jams and air pollution. To help make this work, we need to help the drivers of the city buses stay on time and not sit unnecessarily in traffic. To do this, we’ll need right of way to buses.
I’ve spoken to a few people recently about this and they admitted they didn’t know they had to. Really? This has been a law in a variety of jurisdictions for many years now. There’s also a big sign on the back of city buses that ask you yield to them. Is this another case of drivers being in their own little world and not paying attention to the driving task?
The driver in this photo accelerated past this bus instead of yielding to them, even though the bus driver had their left signal flashing for quite a few seconds once the traffic light changed to green. What was their hurry? Why couldn’t they wait for the bus and then let the bus move back at their next stop? Wouldn’t that be the nicer thing to do as a driver?
A few friends of mine are city buses drivers, so I asked how often other drivers fail to yield to them when they’re trying to pull away from their stop. They each laughed and said it was happening regularly. They’ll signal left to let the drivers behind them know they wanted to pull away from the curb and back into traffic, but the drivers behind them continued to keep going. Some drivers would even honk at them.
If you think about it, if you let the bus back into the traffic flow, it will need to move back in the bus bay roughly another two blocks for their next stop. What’s the problem to let the bus in front of you for this short period of time? Think ahead of time and not how it may affect you for the next few seconds.
Maybe if more drivers helped buses stay on time, they may take them and leave their vehicles at home. This may help our roads to be less congested and help those who feel they still need to drive on a daily basis.
Unrelated to the article, but I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU… I just passed my G2 road test last week, and I learned so much from watching Canada’s Worst Driver (yes, when you were on, haha) that I feel like you were my surrogate driving instructor! I passed with flying colours (even parallel parking, which I didn’t expect to be on the test–never listen to the advice of friends!), and have been safely driving alone with full confidence for 5 days now. Next week, I buy my neighbour’s old car. I’m 29…this has been a LONG time coming!
So again, thank you for excellent tips and advice! And thank you too for your previous reply about Ontario cracking down on unreputable driving schools/instructors…good news. Incidentally, after that I looked up my old driving school–hmm, doesn’t seem to exist anymore, wonder why? 🙂
Congratulations! I’m glad i could help….even though I was unaware I was helping. 😉 Keep the positive attitude and safe driving!