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A bus company in Dublin has confirmed that a “full investigation” is being carried out after one of its employees was filmed driving a double-decker bus on both the cycle lane and footpath in order to undertake a queue of traffic.
So there I was, sitting in traffic that was stopped between Rathfarnham and Terenure when a Dublin Bus went past me on the inside, in the pavement and bicycle Lane. 11am today. @dublinbusnews @TFIupdates @Dept_Transport @IrishTimes @IrishSunOnline @irishdailymail pic.twitter.com/pfwdpXLC1s
— Kevin Gorman (@KevGor64) November 8, 2022
The shocking incident, which took place on Tuesday morning on a residential street in south Dublin, was captured on a car’s dashcam.
The footage, uploaded to Twitter later that evening, shows the driver of the bus – which appears to be out of service – travelling at speed past a row of houses on the Rathfarnham Road towards Terenure, as half of the vehicle straddles the footpath and the other half the adjacent cycle lane.
A cyclist riding in the bike lane comes into view mere seconds after the bus passes, while the law-breaking and reckless driver is soon forced to swerve back into the line of traffic as another motorist emerges from an adjoining road. The video has since been viewed almost 200,000 times on Twitter, with one user describing the incident as “one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen on the roads”.
A spokesperson for Dublin Bus, the state-owned bus operator for Ireland’s capital city, announced last night that “a full investigation is underway” into the incident, the Irish Independent reports.
A statement from An Garda Síochána also said that it has “commenced inquiries into an alleged incident of dangerous driving”. The Fine Gael transport minister Hildegarde Naughton confirmed to RTÉ News this morning that police were investigating the “extremely serious” incident, which she said was “very concerning”.
The video was also discussed yesterday afternoon during a meeting of Dublin City Council’s Traffic and Transport Committee. The meeting, ironically, was scheduled to discuss the Road Safety Authority’s ‘Be Safe, Be Seen’ campaign, which encourages cyclists and pedestrians to wear bright, reflective clothing at night so they can avoid being struck by motorists.
Green Party councillor Carolyn Moore told the committee that, following Tuesday’s incident, the upcoming road safety campaign should instead focus on the behaviour of drivers.
“If you take that bus in Terenure yesterday, any pedestrian who stepped out of their front gate into the path of that bus could have been lit up like a carnival and they still would have been injured in that scenario,” Moore said.
Fianna Fáil councillor Keith Connolly added: “I saw that video myself, I think it was shocking, but ultimately it is down to an enforcement issue. Someone illegally mounting and driving down the pavement is an issue for the guards. It is dangerous driving essentially, and if anyone had walked out on that, it would have been a really bad outcome.”
Connolly later told the Irish Independent that there was “absolutely no excuse” for the bus driver’s actions.
“The video is quite scary. That’s completely unacceptable. It’s unforgiveable in my eyes,” he said.
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