accident waiting to happen?

Today is Thursday...

Can you tell I am counting down the days of the week here?

Right now I am running late, sat on the top deck of a bus, looking at a motorcycle accident.

It's not pretty. There's a big motorbike and lots of glass on the floor and two police people who don't seem to know how to direct traffic! One of them looks familiar, I think I may have served him coffee during the great freeze !

The motorcyclist is sitting in the road and talking to the ambulance people, so I am guessing he is not on the verge of death!

*phew

But it's the second thing to happen like this in the last 24 hours.

Last night, I was sitting on the bus chuckling to myself while reading the London Lite text column where Londoners can text in what they're feeling, ask questions and just generally word vomit while other Londoners respond, when all of a sudden my bus braked violently.

The horn sounded, people shouted and there, through the windscreen, I spied a rather stunned tourist, just centimetres from the front of the massive big, red and frankly hard-to-miss vehicle.

To be fair, I think she looked the wrong way.

Anyway, London buses, as many of you know, are packed more tightly during rush hour than a tin of sardines and so, not everyone has something to hold on to at short notice. Therefore, not everyone remained standing up.

We were turfed off the bus to allow people to help a woman who'd ended up on the floor and couldn't get back up. I can't really tell you much more as I didn't want to gawp at her. But I'm hoping she's doing OK today...

But it got me thinking how one person's stupidity can leave them unscathed but affects a whole load of other people.

Ok, so the tourist may have nearly had a heart attack and peed her pants, but she was essentially unharmed and totally unaware that, as a direct result of her mistake, there was another woman flat out on the floor of my bus.

I wonder what caused the crash today. Was it was the biker himself or some idiot not paying attention? If it was the latter, that means that someone is going about their business right now completely oblivious to the mess they've caused – the injured biker, the damaged bike, the closed road, and the hoards of people at each bus stop for the next 2 miles all wondering why they've waited half an hour for a bus.

It's weird when you think about it. And thinking about it has made me realise how much more likely I am to cause a road accident than say, a hearing person. I mean, you've only got to think back to the fire engine incident or when I ran out in front of a car and got hit after hearing Ma say go instead of no.

I can pretty much guarantee that getting run over was way more traumatic for the guy that hit me and my Ma who peeled me off the tarmac than it was for me. I mean I had cartoon birds flying around my head for goodness sake.

So from now on, I am going to pay even more attention so I don't end up unwittingly trashing someone else's day.

And if we all do that, maybe it won't happen so much anymore...