How my journey on the bus finished up in A&E

• LIKE your NW1 correspondent (TfL’s electric buses have braking issues, October 24) I had a horrendous fall, this time on the 88 bus at Piccadilly Circus last week.

I had just got on the bus, had no time to find a seat when the driver pulled quickly away and then did a violent emergency braking… but this was no electric bus but an ordinary bus being driven in the middle of Regent Street.

I fell backwards on the floor banging my head and my bad hip for which I am waiting for a hip replacement.

These are no easy falls we passengers are experiencing. Another of my friends landed backwards on her head on the C11 bus and a young friend of mine broke her hand coming down from the upper deck when the bus violently jerked.

Is it going to take a death to convince Transport for London to instruct their drivers to drive in a moderate sensible manner? Because this is what we will be looking at.

I went to A&E to check out my hip, as I’m still hobbling to walk and am a mass of bruises, but the doctor was more worried about the knock on my head. He stressed if anyone hits their head violently, especially on the bus when we are thrown down so hard, go to hospital because you may well suffer unknowingly from a bleed on the brain.

I was lucky, I must have a very hard head. But now I am so careful on the bus and won’t get up to leave until it has stopped.

Time was, of course, that a conductor would have been there to help but now sadly the majority of drivers are more interested in keeping to their time schedule than bothering about the welfare of their passengers.

DIANA BRADFORD
Address supplied