Bad bus drivers are in the news again. Are they ever out of it? I feel so fortunate that I can get by without having to use our dreaded public transport.
Quite a few years ago, due to a complicated problem with my wheels, I had used the buses for a while and boy, had they given me material to write about.
But although we have since joined the EU and we have a number of new buses on the road, little seems to have improved.
It would be appalling if the driver responsible for the accident where a Dutch woman was injured, were still driving a bus.
The lady, who needed several stitches on her face, alleged in court that the bus driver was very agitated and aggressive towards the passengers and drove at excessive speed.
When the time came for them to alight, her husband got off first and as she was following the bus accelerated, causing her to fall and get hurt.
This is not an isolated case of bad behaviour by bus drivers. There are frequent complaints about those of them who drive too fast, are aggressive and rude.
An ex-pat wrote to The Times, a few days ago, of being “very badly mistreated by a bus driver who was extremely rude, impatient, threatening and aggressive. He was downright abusive. He unnecessarily escalated the situation and humiliated us in front of a busload of people.”
Comments in response online included: “The amount of times I have had bad experiences with Maltese bus drivers have been numerous”; “Some drivers were anything but polite with me, but mostly with other passengers especially tourists.”
I am sick and tired of repeating and listening to the same old kantaliena. If a bus driver has allegedly caused injury to a passenger through negligent driving, or harassment through abusive behaviour, he should be suspended immediately.
If he is proven not guilty he can then be reinstated and compensated by the person who made the wrong allegation. And the media should give the same prominence to that outcome.
However, it is inexcusable that commuters, especially those who have no choice but to travel by bus every day, be exposed to such awful antics. What does it say about their quality of life?
The fact that there are decent bus drivers is not something one should be grateful for and is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Their behaving in an acceptable manner does not exonerate or in any way mitigate bad behaviour by their colleagues.
Decent behaviour by anyone delivering a public service is expected.
This bad image of Malta our public transport is reflecting has to stop. A few years back when we were going through a similar outpouring of disgust at the state of our public transport, a number of bus drivers were sent abroad to see how it’s done.
We had a lot of trumpet blowing by the Malta Transport Authority (ADT) and were told that the freshly trained drivers would then pass on their acquired knowledge of how a bus driver should go about his business to the other drivers.
Obviously this did not happen. There was also a bus driver who was so good at his job that he was included in a tourism promotion al ad.
That did not seem to infect (as in communicating enthusiasm) his fellow drivers to improve and we seem to either have regressed, yet again, or not moved at all.
Of course the uncivilised traits mentioned above are not only prevalent in the buses sector, it is common among many drivers.
Another expat on a two-week holiday complained that one of his first encounters was with a very rude and obnoxious cab driver. A coach driver once tried to nudge me off the road for daring to overtake him, and I did not get any joy when I reported the incident at the nearest police station.
What is farcical is that public transport vehicles that should be driven at a steady speed, are sometimes driven as though a maniac is at the wheel, and most police cars are driven at a snail’s pace as though they are part of a funeral cortege.
They never seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere. Many of them also never use their indicators, so why are we surprised that few drivers do?
Mentioning a funeral cortege reminded me of an extremely embarrassing situation I experienced recently. Now I know that parking, especially when attending a funeral, is pretty harrowing and I am in no way trying to make family mourners feel at all responsible for what I am about to say, but funeral directors use a form of emotional bullying to block roads outside churches.
It is understandable that the funeral hearse has to be parked just outside the church. However, if the driver sees that a car, coming towards him, has had difficulty manoeuvring because of badly parked cars, he should not make matters worse by pulling out just as the oncoming car is about to go past.
As though it was not frustrating enough to be put in a position where one could not go forward or back, a woman — who I assumed was part of the funeral director’s staff since she emerged from the hearse — came up to me and said: “how would you feel if this was your mother’s funeral?”
This gave the impression that I had caused the jam and was being deliberately insensitive. When she then realised that I was stuck and could not move at all, she took on the role of a traffic cop and got all the cars behind me to start reversing.
Bullying on the road is rampant and it is rapidly escalating into a free for all. The horse-drawn cab drivers add to the anarchy by using busy roads, stopping wherever they like and leave pools of stinking horse pee and mounds of manure all over the place.
Are they being fined for breaking the new litter law?

P.S.
So it is official that Malta is by far the most densely populated of the 27 EU member states. Let us hope the government’s answer is not that we need more high-rise buildings to accommodate the ever-growing population.
Thanks to modern medicine and a relatively good standard of living, people are living longer. And despite that families are no longer breeding like rabbits, if developers have their way we shall soon all be living like rabbits, in overcrowded, tall, concrete hutches.
Even the PM recently said it made more sense to have a family home converted into flats housing more families, this in the same breath as promising a better quality of life!