Driver Blamed for Chiswick Routemaster Crash

Lost control of bus and drove into office building on High Road

Bus hits building on Chiswick High Road. Picture: Beverley Turner

The crash in which a Routemaster bus swerved off Chiswick High Road and into a building last year has been blamed on a newly qualified driver.

The vehicle hit the offices of the Capital Housing Association in December of last year. Nobody was hurt in the incident.

Originally there were suggestions that there were renewed problems with the power steering of the buses. 468 Routemasters had to be recalled earlier in the year to have their steering systems replaced by WrightBus.

ChiswickW4.com made requests for information about the cause of the collision to Transport for London and the Mayor's office but did not receive a response. As a result a Freedom of Information request was made asking for correspondence relating to the crash.

This revealed that the bus was an out of service London United bus that was being driven by a newly qualified driver. The driver was learning a route under instruction at the time of the incident and the crash was attributed to driver error.

The accident investigation report states that the driver failed to take the steering lock off in time after exiting Stamford Brook garage. According to the driver trainer who was supervising her at the time she then froze and failed to take her foot off the accelerator. The bus mounted the pavement and knocked over a traffic light only stopping when it hit the building. The driver trainer stated that he had noted no previous faults with her driving although she was a slow and nervous driver. She had 38 hours driving experience although she had only recently left the training school. She had driven out of the garage in the same way before with no problems. The driver resigned shortly afterwards.

The bus had been serviced only a fortnight before.

Picture: Hypoxi Chiswick

Picture: Fiona Rivaz

June 1, 2017