"Premium" Coaches

Would you pass this on to the person responsible for monitoring
driving standards within your organisation please.

I was cycling along Buckingham Palace Road around 8.40 this morning
between Eccleston Street and Lower Belgrave Street. A large Premium
Coaches vehicle with Hairspray advertised on the back and registration
number FJ06 ZLX was in the left hand lane in front of me before the
Eccleston Street junction and making little progress so I moved into
the middle of the right hand lane of the dual carriageway and
attempted to pass. When I was closer to the front of the coach than
the back the coach crossed into my lane with no signal, I would have
been completely visible to the driver in his wing mirror. In order to
avoid being pushed into the railings in the middle of the road I had
to stop cycling. As the left hand lane was clear I moved into that
lane only for the coach to change into that lane directly in front of
me, again with no signal.

At the lights before Lower Belgrave Street I rode alongside and
shouted to the driver, as his window was closed and he appeared to be
oblivious to me looking at him, that he had twice tried to kill me. He
opened the window and addressed me as "big mouth". I told him he had
twice nearly knocked me off my bicycle. His response was "your mates
cut across in front of me". I had no "mates" in the area I was aware
of but I assume he was referring to other cyclists trying to get in
front of his coach which was accelerating away from the lights
extremely slowly. I told him again what he had done and he told me to
"bugger off" twice. At no point did he apologise, his only explanation
for his action was the road habits of other cyclists, assuming they
are the "your mates" he referred to.

From his response about "my mates" and their actions it appears to me
the driver looks upon cyclists as a collective group. His inexplicably
careless actions could then be interpreted as an attempt to punish me
with potential death for the actions of other cyclists he was unhappy
with. Either way his driving appears to be completely unsuitable for a
driver of such a large vehicle and his offensive response when I
questioned his driving was a disgrace to your company.

Could I ask somebody in your organisation to ask this man to use his
mirrors and indicators for their intended purpose, to refrain from
believing he can use his vehicle to collectively punish cyclists in a
life-threatening manner and to refrain from using offensive language
during the course of your business.

Thank You
Alistair Burns

### Update 30/09/2010 ###

Today I received a reply as below :

"Thank you for the email. I have forwarded this to our operations department who is in charge of all our drivers. The issues you have raised are serious and need to be addressed - please allow us to apologise for this. Premium Tours does not tolerate inappropriate behaviour from any members of our staff and we can assure you we will further investigate the matter to make sure things like this would not occur in the future."

This was good to receive, particularly in view of the fact that my statement isn't supported by any third-party witnesses. I'm not looking for a witch hunt but would be reassured to hear the driver has had the error of his ways pointed out.