Right chaps, your thoughts please.
I’m a bus driver.
I pulled in at the end of my route today and did my walk round check(which we have to do at the end of each journey).
I had a N/S/R outer punchture(twin wheel).
I called my company and the engineering supervisor asked me to drive it back to the garage empty.
I will admit, I was not happy doing it, and told the supervisor.
He stated that it was not illegal as I was taking the bus back to the garage.
Ive had a look at VOSA’s defect book, and can’t find anything in there saying its a PG9 or illegal.
Welll first question…how far away was depot…a few miles well worth taking it back and your empty and I doubt the tyre looked too obvious.
Was it an offence well most of us doing the same would claim it just happened and we were moving to a safe place…300 miles away
and I forgot to note N/S/R…kerbside…who would see it.
There’s nothing to say you can’t drive with a punctured tyre but I’m surprised an engineering supervisor said to carry on. There would have been extra weight forced onto the good tyre still remaining and carrying on would have put that at extra risk of damage or failure.
Personally I would have stood my ground on this one and refused to take it back.
In that case your engineering manager is an irresponsible prick.
The only reason you are told you can drive with a puncture is so you don’t become a moron sat in the outside lane on the M25 trying to change a tyre. It’s not so you can carry on your journey until you can put your feet up and get a cuppa.
Remember it’s 3 points and £100 fine per tyre if they’re defective (fixed penalty - could be more if sent to court) and that’s on the driver of the vehicle not the operator.
Legal / smegal- basic common sense not to drive a vehicle in this condition- if (no matter how unlikely) an accident had occured your braking abilities/system would be reduced/defective with diminished traction so you would be up poop creak without a paddle.
Not really a thread I would expect to appear on here even with the amount of Darwin award candidate’s we have.
Just because you don’t have passengers on board doesn’t make your vehicle any less dangerous. Theres also the small matter of your flat tyre overheating and coming adrift. Unlikely of course but when the poop hits the fan, guess who shoulders the blame. Oh and its not your prick of an engineering supervisor responsibility, unless you recorded the call and made him aware of it then just maybe his response would be slightly different although at the end of the day your the captain of your ship… funny how many don’t realise this.
Sure VOSA have a code for this stuff somewhere but it may fall into the category of idiot driver/obviously defective vehicle…
So what did you do in the end.
10 miles or 10 inches makes no difference it doesn’t move till its safe… Oh alright 10 inches I may chance it…
Course you stayed put and had it repaired there and then by a tyre fitter who miracously had the ability to fit a new tyre roadside.
Edit: Nearside rear thats a doddle…
Maybe he’s on a tight budget and didn’t want to pay for a call out on a saturday.
It does seem daft to drive it back 10 miles but i wouldn’t moan about it to much if it was me, help the poor man out abit
Give or take a bit mate and if you got stopped it’s just happened
If a bus operator’s running it that tight that they can’t factor in the call out of a tyre fitter then I’d imagine Rambo19 should be looking for jobs pretty quick at I doubt financially they’ll be around by the end of the month.
Is it a large well known operator or just a small outfit?
tango boy:
Maybe he’s on a tight budget and didn’t want to pay for a call out on a saturday.
It does seem daft to drive it back 10 miles but i wouldn’t moan about it to much if it was me, help the poor man out abit
Give or take a bit mate and if you got stopped it’s just happened
Dipper_Dave:
Not really a thread I would expect to appear on here even with the amount of Darwin award candidate’s we have.
m1cks:
There’s nothing to say you can’t drive with a punctured tyre but I’m surprised an engineering supervisor said to carry on. There would have been extra weight forced onto the good tyre still remaining and carrying on would have put that at extra risk of damage or failure.
Personally I would have stood my ground on this one and refused to take it back.
Under the Road Traffic Act of 1998 it is an offence to:
“Use, cause or permit another to use a motor vehicle or trailer on a road which might for whatever reason, involve a danger of injury to any person”.
The most common offences committed are:
Using a vehicle in a dangerous condition
Using a vehicle with Faulty Brakes
Using a vehicle with defective tyres
Using a vehicle with faulty lights
If i had a ‘friend’ who drives a lorry or bus for a living, and he discovered a flat twin on an empty vehicle, and if my friend happened to be 10 miles from the depot, i would hope that my friend would find an air line and put some wind in the thing.
Maybe my friend carries an adaptor fitted mobile airline so he could plug into one of the vehicles airtanks and blow the tyre up, some chaps do that.
Either way i have no doubt my friend could manage a quiet steady drive back to the depot without annihilating a convent full of nuns carrying kittens.
Another thing, my friend would have had a gentlemans agreement at the end of the brief conversation that such a phone call that started this thread never happened, and i know for a fact he wouldn’t have breathed a word after, nor posted anything online.
I suspect if my friend found a trailer airbag burst he might lay his mitts on a knife and cable ties and manage to get that one home too.
Dipper_Dave:
Legal / smegal- basic common sense not to drive a vehicle in this condition- if (no matter how unlikely) an accident had occured your braking abilities/system would be reduced/defective with diminished traction so you would be up poop creak without a paddle.
Not really a thread I would expect to appear on here even with the amount of Darwin award candidate’s we have.
Just because you don’t have passengers on board doesn’t make your vehicle any less dangerous. Theres also the small matter of your flat tyre overheating and coming adrift. Unlikely of course but when the poop hits the fan, guess who shoulders the blame. Oh and its not your prick of an engineering supervisor responsibility, unless you recorded the call and made him aware of it then just maybe his response would be slightly different although at the end of the day your the captain of your ship… funny how many don’t realise this.
Sure VOSA have a code for this stuff somewhere but it may fall into the category of idiot driver/obviously defective vehicle…
So what did you do in the end.
10 miles or 10 inches makes no difference it doesn’t move till its safe… Oh alright 10 inches I may chance it…
Course you stayed put and had it repaired there and then by a tyre fitter who miracously had the ability to fit a new tyre roadside.
Edit: Nearside rear thats a doddle…
I hope you can see us from way up on that soap box fella. At the end of the day, the bloke wants to do one thing, and is told to do another. In assuming he’s asking for other peoples reading of the situation
bazza123:
I hope you can see us from way up on that soap box fella. At the end of the day, the bloke wants to do one thing, and is told to do another. In assuming he’s asking for other peoples reading of the situation
Do you mean ‘High Horse’, in which case I can see your point of view even from way up here but I responded in what i would do now…I understand the realities are slightly different, but if it goes wrong which is unlikely it will go very wrong for him. I can only say what I would do and in this case the engineering supervisor would be safer going home when i got back after the tyre company had changed my tyre roadside.
If it helps change your opinion of me I have done some dodgy stuff in my time and my High Horse is more of a Shetland Pony
Many times when I worked for a large bus firm if a bus was within 5 mile and it was a drive tyre we would get the driver to try and limp home as buses have a bad tendosey for the suspension to drop with no warning as the jacking points on the rear are a bit hit and miss to get were the front jacking points are not bad
Perfectly acceptable to drive a reasonable distance to a place of repair particularly if the vehicle is without burden, and not revenue earning, as in this case.
Different matter if it represented a safety threat to passengers or other road users but in this case there would be none unless you’re one of the absurd drama queens looking for an opportunity to throw the toys out of the pram.
The workshop is a safer place to carry out the repair and there’s no need to unnecessarily expose a tyre fitter or recovery driver to danger at the side of the road attending needlessly.
You might get a blowout if you drove it down the motorway on the limiter but not just limping it back to the depot. Braking would be in no way impaired below acceptable levels and certainly not if the bus was empty.
I once drove a mini-bus home empty with a flat inside rear tyre.I kept the speed down and didnt notice much difference in handling.Some of the large operators are very thrifty and getting a fitter out would result in a P45 one way or another.
alamcculloch:
I once drove a mini-bus home empty with a flat inside rear tyre.I kept the speed down and didnt notice much difference in handling.Some of the large operators are very thrifty and getting a fitter out would result in a P45 one way or another.
It’s not necessarily thrift, having done bus tyres, they will often be in busy urban areas with pedestrians. Send a wrecker and you’ll have folk walking over the underlift to cross the road or to change the tyre you’ll most likely have to have the air hose across the pavement waiting or someone to trip over.
Often it’s just better and safer all round to limp the vehicle back to base if feasible safely. Unfortunately, there’s a breed of drama queen driver that like nothing more than sitting at the side of the road, sucking their thumb, rocking back and forth muttering ‘it’s my licence’ at any opportunity.
For anyone worrying a out VOSA they are generally realistic an amber ABS trailer light that’s appeared during the journey would come under ‘defective brakes’ but generally a pragmatic view is taken even though if it’s wet there will be no ABS and the bus full of nuns might cop it.
