Following on from yesterday’s news theme, I captured this journalistic scene late this afternoon whilst out exploring the nearby roads. I’m not sure what happened but the bus stop and railing on the other side of the road (beyond the open emergency door) had been well and truly bent and part of the latter caught under the bus and is visible here.
The bus (Dennis Dart R296 CMV) was on Route 91, and is seen here in Robin Hood Road in Knaphill, near Woking.
I took a few other pics and will try and put some of them up later.
From the Woking News and Mail:
A bus ran out of control and tore through a bus stop leaving waiting passengers lucky to be alive.
The incident was the second involving an Arriva bus in Knaphill in the past year and the third in Woking.
The injured were left shocked and bruised after they were showered with flying debris.
Wendy Dorey was waiting at the bus stop at the junction of Barnby Road and Nursery Road at 4pm on Friday when the Woking-bound number 91 careered off the road and headed straight towards her.
“I thought my time was up, all I had in my head was who is going to tell my little boy,” said the 40-year-old mother-of-three.
“The bus was coming down the road and the next minute it was coming towards us. It took the bus stop out and something hit me and I went flying across the bench. Then it just carried on.
“The ambulance driver said it was a miracle we weren’t more seriously injured.”
Mrs Dorey and a 17-year-old girl, who asked not to be identified, were treated for shock and bruises at the scene. Mrs Dorey was seen by doctors at Royal Surrey County Hospital on Saturday and treated for internal bruising to her shoulder.
The 17-year-old said: “It looked like the bus was going at normal speed but the next thing I knew it seemed to swerve and it crashed through the railings and knocked Wendy flying.
“It was a serious shock to the system. Everything flashed past. It happened too quickly to think about my safety.
“I was more worried about Wendy because she was completely knocked out of it.”
Mrs Dorey, of the Goldings in Goldsworth Park, was left with her arm in a sling and is now apprehensive about travelling on Arriva buses.
She said on Monday: “Today was my first time back on a bus and I was a bit nervous about it, especially being back at a bus stop. I felt very panicky.”
Police cordoned off the scene of the accident by 4.30pm and the wrecked bus, which appeared to have lost the glass from most of its windows, was blocking Barnby Road.
Glass and the twisted wreckage of the safety railings lay strewn across the road and a throng of bystanders gathered by the police cordon.
One remarked on the date — Friday 13 — and another, Pete Colville said: “I didn’t see it but I heard it.
“It sounded like a big tipper lorry emptying bricks and it went on for ages, absolutely ages.”
The driver of the bus, which was empty when it crashed, was taken to St Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey with minor injuries. The police are now investigating the cause of the accident.
A spokesman for the company confirmed there were no other vehicles involved and said Arriva was helping the police with their investigation. He would make no further comment.
This is not the first time passengers and pedestrians have been given a rough ride by Arriva. Last June, on two separate occasions, two buses destroyed stops when they mounted pavements in Woking.
The first smash — which happened as children left Beaufort Primary School, Goldsworth Park, for the day — left a mother and her five-year-old daughter bruised, bleeding and in need of hospital treatment.
A number 91 ploughed through the bus stop they were in on Kirkland Avenue.
Two weeks later a number 35 destroyed a bus stop in the Broadway in Knaphill. The driver, Rafal Szafran, was drunk at the time and was later banned from driving for a year and fined £300.
Photoshop:
Cropped and Resized
