Bus rolled down hill parking brake not applied

[mushspeed]

This is a job we did a while ago....

The driver parked the bus on a hill and did not apply the parking brake .... it rolled down the hill towards a pedestrian precinct crowded with Saturday shoppers.

it crashed into a line of railings  sign boards traffic lights  and ended up against the traffic light control box totally destroying them fortunately no one was injured....

The bus was only a few days old and the  DOT wanted to do an in depth inspection on it.  it was vital that no further damage was done on the recovery.

 

It was not possible to take it forward and if we winched it backwards all the wreckage was going jam up and ratchet along the underneath...and do a lot of further damage, ( Didn't want that !! )

We used a high pressure starter mat and inflated each side under the rear gradually blocking up with cribbing until we could get a heavy railway tie under each rear wheel..

This gave us enough clearance to cut away most of the wreckage.... we then winched it backwards  as far as we could and clear of the traffic light control box,  then repeated the lift operation on the front wheels...

We then managed to air it up and we discovered the bus was fitted with a ferry lift enabling us to blow the suspension up even higher than normal and gain enough height to clear the rest of the debris. we then winched it clear and loaded it on our landoll to go for inspection....  Bus company happy we did no recovery damage and after the dot had finished with their inspections we transported it back to the coach builders to be repaired.... 3 months later we collected it after the repairs and thransported it back to the bus company to go back into service.

Incidentally ...the driver got fired !!   

[mushspeed]

I forgot to say .....the Police initially thought a cyclist was trapped under the front  ( see pics 2 and 4 )

 

Fortunately the cyclist had a miraculous escape as he heard the screams from the public as the bus rolled down the hill without a driver and realised it was coming right for him, he leapt out of the way just in time... but the bike didn't fare too well !!

 

John.