Bus 'surge' strike action
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• Bus drivers in Hanwell, west London, staged a one-day strike last week following claims by a driver that his bus had inexplicably "surged forward", causing damage to a number of other vehicles.
Transport and General Workers' Union's acting London District secretary All French told Commercial Motor that the driver had a 24-year safe-driving record but had still been held responsible by the management. "A television report said the incident was down to driver error and this upset the lads at Hanwell," says French, "but engineers who immediately carried out inspections of all the vehicles found a number of defects. The drivers did not want to take out unsafe buses."
London Buses says its engineers also investigated the incident but found no evidence of a power surge. "We have had one or two similar complaints in the past and we have always investigated these fully, but we have never found any evidence to uphold the complaints," says Paul Copel of London Buses.
All the buses at Hanwell station are Metro Canunell Weymann integral doubledeckers.