A woman has spoken out about her experience of being 'locked' on a bus by a First Bus driver. The bus operator has apologised after a driver reportedly left the passengers on the bus with the lights off and the door locked.
The passenger, 23, who wishes to remain anonymous, was travelling back from Pub in the Park in Bath on June 17 at around 9.45pm with a group of friends. She said the driver left the bus at Dorchester Street Station just before 10pm without saying anything to the rest of the passengers.
Recounting the experience to Bristol Live, the woman explained: "The driver turned the engine off, turned the lights off, got out of the driver seat, left the bus and shut the door. None of the passengers on the bus were told. Another driver appeared after about 10/15 minutes and did speak to us and made a few jokes."
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She continued: "I was fortunate enough to be with others, however, we did discuss how vulnerable this would've made us feel if we had been alone as well as the health and safety risk. We didn't know how to get off if there was an emergency or who we were on the bus with or how long we were going to be on the bus."
The woman added that First Bus has since been incredibly helpful with assisting her on the incident after she got in touch with the operator. She also said she recognises the company has struggled with staff shortages recently and appreciated their transparency regarding these issues on social media.
In response to the incident, a spokesperson for First West of England said: “The first thing to say is that the safety and wellbeing of our passengers is always our number one priority and that this sounds like a very unusual situation which we are investigating fully to find out exactly what the circumstances were.
“We have reached out to the person who made the initial social media post to get their full version of events to try to get to the bottom of what has happened. Until we speak to all the parties involved it would be inappropriate to comment any further, other than to apologise if any of our passengers felt unsafe during this incident.”
While the woman said she was not put off from using the bus in the future, she said: "It is concerning to hear amongst peers that there have been issues with buses not picking people up late at night, buses not turning up and buses leaving people in the dark with no explanation.
"I use the bus route quite regularly however, due to the unreliability of the services recently I have found that I will walk or drive to places more regularly."
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