Today on the way back from work, I saw four sets of lights ahead of my car on the aforementioned road and I was very surprised to see them suddenly disappear from view. I immediately slowed waiting for the lights to adjust into something I could recognise. I proceeded with caution and pulled up before the blind corner I mentioned above to see the rear end of a double-decker bus sticking out of the ditch, lights ablaze. I put my hazard warning lights on and slid into the ditch to assess the situation. The driver of the bus still had his hands fixed on the steering wheel and he scarcely noticed when I tapped on the window on the side of the bus that was not kissing dirt. He glanced at me for a second and I asked him if he was okay. The man was clearly in too much shock to answer. I scanned the bus and was surprised to see that it was still chock full of passengers, despite the fact that the bus was listing very seriously to port. As I watched the people on the top deck of the bus shifting around upstairs, I noticed that the bus was moving quite dramatically. Immediately, I decided that they would probably best be served by an emergency evacuation so I sought the approval of the dazed driver who was now staring at his mobile phone. After repeating my request twice I had to actually seize him by the shoulder to get his full attention. Finally he nodded in agreement.
I went to the rear of the bus to assess the situation further. If you can imagine it was listing to the left on a steep embankment and the front left of the vehicle was firmly entrenched in this muddy ditch. Unfortunately, this obstruction was still allowing the bus to pivot further into the ditch and I was trying to calculate in my head the odds of it toppling over and indeed, if this would be more or less dangerous than removing the passengers and upsetting the presumably delicate weight distribution. A sudden abrupt lurch to the left made my mind up for me and I shouted for the people inside to move away from the emergency exit. After a fair bit of manhandling, I managed to get the rear most emergency exit off its attachment and I stepped onto the bus in the hope that a British man in a suit would somehow make the passengers believe that everything was under control. At this point I realised that some people were cut and everyone was in horrible shock. Obviously the twenty five or so people on board had been waiting for the stunned driver to make some kind of executive decision and were clutching at bruises or comforting other passengers who were more seriously hurt. After a quick assessment of the people on board, it was clear that everyone was well enough to leave the vehicle, including the walking wounded.
In my best Michael Caine impersonation, I explained that everyone was going to be leaving the bus but it was crucial for everyone to leave in the correct order so as not to upset the balance of the vehicle. Naturally, the people on the bottom floor were now looking at the emergency exit through which I had entered with some envy. I politely insisted that everyone downstairs would need to move to the right hand side of the bus and remain there until I had evacuated the upper floor. Thankfully a lady echoed my sentiment and assisted me in moving everyone across to the side of the bus that was not sinking into a muddy ditch. With that done, I looked upstairs. A youth in the rearmost seats had clearly had a fight with the far emergency exit and copped the worst of it. He was bloodied but defiant and seemed content that my way of evacuation was better than a ten foot drop through a recently broken window frame. First I asked the people on the beleaguered left-hand side to move downstairs and then as much to the right as they could. This plan seemed to have the desired effect and the bus immediately seemed far more stable. When everyone was downstairs, I stepped off the bus with the aforementioned lady and we one by one helped people from the emergency exit and into the cold night air. Some of the people we took off were literally rigid with fright and I gather the impact must have been considerable, especially for those precariously seated on the top deck.
When we had finally brought the last passenger off the bus, I returned to try to convince the driver that it was quite unnecessary for him to go down with his bus. Remarkably he was still on the phone to his head office, patiently explaining that he had just parked their eight ton bus in a six foot ditch. When he had completed his conversation I asked if he had yet called the Police. He reported that he had not. I asked him to do so immediately. While he was complying, we vacated the now thoroughly entrenched bus. Now, at the time I was quite proud of my evacuation until I actually gave our new situation some serious thought. I had brilliantly placed twenty five pedestrians behind a blind bend on a road that normally enjoyed a clientele of vehicles travelling at anywhere between sixty to a hundred miles per hour. It was also dark and very, very cold indeed. I returned to my car for a moment to glance at the temperature and realised it was a brisk -2°C. Looking at my new adopted charges, I suddenly wonder if I might have unintentionally signed their death warrants. The driver announced that the bus company were sending a new bus to pick us up but that it was setting off from much further North. He also said that the Police would hopefully be here shortly and I was extremely relieved that the correct authorities would soon be here to release me of my newfound responsibility.
Unfortunately, the passengers were now standing in an open field where the wind chill was affecting everyone quite badly. I took the five elderly most ladies and put them in my car with the heaters on full blast in the hope that I could at least postpone my inevitable manslaughter charges for as long as possible. I was praying that between the still glowing lights of the upturned bus and my hazard warning lights that the usually reckless denizens of this particular back-road would have enough time to see our dilemma and avoid a similar fate to the one that had befallen our hapless bus driver. Feeling responsible for their sub-zero situation I began to distribute cigarettes and they happily passed around my hip-flask of Kentucky Straight. Five long minutes turned to ten. Ten to fifteen. I began to wonder if someone was playing some hideous practical joke on me for my all too abundant sins over the years. Those with mobile phones began to order taxis in the hope that they would arrest our frost-bitten demise but everyone was having enormous difficulty explaining precisely where we were, since it was pitch black and the terrain was unremarkable. As if to make the situation all the more surreal, the sheep who’s field we had disturbed started to head over to see what all the fuss was about. It’s freezing cold, I thought to myself, I’m standing in wet mud and I am going to die surrounded by sheep. Eventually I saw some headlights appearing on the road and I decided that I should probably try to arrest this car’s progress before they ate the rear side of a bus at full speed. Fortunately I had a torch in the boot of my car and I was able to convince them to slow to a reasonable speed. The gentleman in the car seemed utterly uninterested in our predicament and told me to stay put and wait for the Police before driving away. I was astonished at the rudeness of this man, driving away in an empty car while we were freezing on the road side.
Soon afterwards the farmer who owned the field through which the bus had made a short-lived detour arrived to assess the damage to his property. Thankfully he parked his tractor at the other end of the road and turned on the flashing orange warning light, which I hoped would severely reduce the chances of us being killed by a speeding motorist from the other direction. He was a kindly gentleman but he was obviously quite upset about the fact that the bus had taken down a fence which normally prevented his sheep from becoming fodder for speeding vehicles. I could only sympathise with the man momentarily because yet more lights appeared further down the road. This time I was determined to dig my heels in and demand that these cars would not be leaving without taking some of my stray passengers to somewhere there was less chance of expiry via hypothermia. Fortunately the couple in the first car were very friendly and were all too happy to ship three of our number to warmer climates. Buoyed by my newfound success as an immigration agent, I managed to convince an Eastern European gentleman in the car immediately behind that his future now involved shipping freezing refugees away from this bleak meadow. He either accepted this inevitability or simply didn’t know enough English to object. As I watched him disappear, I began to feel more optimistic about my rescue mission. Of the original passengers, I now had only eighteen or so remaining. Ten more miserable minutes passed before another car appeared but I only managed to offload one passenger on them and a vague promise that they would return for more. It had now been some forty minutes and there was still no sign of Police or a replacement bus. My successes in flagging down some automobiles had at least improved my standing with the remaining refugees, who were definitely looking upon me with kinder eyes. The driver was squelching around the field having a ridiculously circular argument with the farmer.
After fifty minutes we were very cold indeed. Worse of all, I had to give up my jacket to a shivering young lady and my scarf to another youth who seemed to be turning blue. My car was now the one sanctuary for those who were feeling the cold particularly badly and some sort of emergency rota had been established to see who was next to enjoy the warmth of its interior. Incredibly, a bus engineer from Aberdeen was the next to arrive on the scene and he began to make notes and take photos of the beached vehicle. He was certainly more helpful than the driver, who had taken to sulking amidst accusations from his former passengers that he had been driving too quickly (he casually remarked to me that he considered this near-blind corner to be a “fifty mile an hour bend” apparently unaware of the differences between driving a modern car and the fully-laden behemoth he had unceremoniously parked in a ditch). Finally, after a little over an hour, flashing blue lights arrived on the horizon. Sure enough, a single Police car (1) carrying a single Police Officer (1) appeared and I hoped he might take control of the situation. He was a nice enough chap but he didn’t seem to know what the best course of procedure was. We re-arranged our cars so the angry farmer could depart with his tractor and the Policeman decided that the Fire Department were our best bet. Bizarrely, when a massive fire truck did arrive some twenty minutes later, the four Firemen (4) on board took one look at the bus, explained that this was hardly their jurisdiction and promptly left as quickly as they had arrived. I didn’t have long to marvel at this truly unbelievable attitude before another Police car arrived with two further Officers (2), one of which seemed to be superior in rank to the other already on the scene. He spoke to the driver briefly before coming over to talk to me. I gave him an account of the situation and he immediately asked if I had thought to get the names and addresses of those who I had sent into the night. I was tired and cold enough to find this insultingly ridiculous and I explained that I was rather more concerned with the well-being of the passengers than his incident report. This seemed to annoy him quite profoundly and he didn’t talk to me again.
With the Police now in charge, I decided my best course of action was to pick four of the remaining survivors and take them on to Peterhead, which was the buses’ original destination. After they had given statements to the Police, we crammed into my car and set off, just in time to see a bus arrive for the handful of remaining passengers. They all took turns explaining their version of events and all agreed that the driver had been driving irresponsibly. I began to wonder if the reason he had not called the Police in the first place was because they would inevitable breathalyse him. I couldn’t help but think that he must have been either asleep or inebriated to make such a fearful hash of that incredibly sharp bend. It was really a wonder that people weren’t killed. I finally made it home after dropping off my charges and I thought I’d type this up while waiting for my well deserved bath to pour. Sorry I don’t have a moral or a life lesson to end this tale, I am absolutely exhausted and it’s been one of those days.
Unfortunately it was too dark for photos. Maybe the bus will still be there tomorrow and I can get better ones.