Today's action: The lucky one

Here in Almere we have separate bus lanes. Apart from maybe two or three places in the city public transport busses are running on their own infrastructure, separated from the normal traffic. On many places bicycle paths and roads cross those buslanes and we do have a number of accidents each year where other traffic is being hit by a bus.

The crossings are all equipped with traffic lights and the bus always gets green light when approaching a crossing. So the concept is easy to understand and very safe. That is, when people crossing the buslanes respect the lights and stop to let the bus pass when their light is red.

Now here's where often the problem starts. Sometimes a car is being hit by a bus. Mostly in those cases the car driver missed the red light, for example due to being blinded by the sun (which happened earlier this week too in another incident). But when youths on bycicles and scooters are involved often it is a case of not paying attention, listening to music on headphones or, and I have seen that happen clearly more than once, sheer stupidity and trying to beat the bus to the crossing and passing right in front.

What the cause was of the accident today is not known to me. But that is never the issue in my blipjournals. It's what the rescue workers have to deal with. In this case the call was a scooter or moped hit by a bus. We have had incidents where scooterdrivers were killed in similar collisions, so these calls are always tense. You never know what to expect.

This was not far from my house, so I got on my bicycle and went to the scene. Getting there I found the moped lying under the front of the bus, several meters past the bicycle path crossing. It looked awful, the driver of the moped must have suffered a terrible blow. Apparently the injured person was already taken into the ambulance, which was at the scene already. I feared the worst.

But then, after a while, she came walking out of the ambulance, only having a bandage around one hand. I was surprised! How could anyone suffer a blow from a bus like that, being dragged along for several meters and walk away? We concluded this could only be due to the very prompt reaction of the busdriver. Not only did she make an emergency stop, also, clearly visible in the picture, she steered to the left. By doing so she managed to miss hitting the girl and only hit the moped, causing the girl to fall off beside the bus and not in front of the bus. A professional at the wheel of a large vehicle, saving the girl from serious injuries. Or even worse. This girl really was the lucky one.