Minibus Madness

Minibus drivers are a mixed bag of personalities.

Not all drivers are belligerent; some are decent fellows, but no one writes the local rag to commend good drivers.

Instead, we read letters such as this:

I was sitting on my usual minibus recently being driven by a manic driver who is obviously hated by every other bus driver on the route. He's the only driver I've seen being given the "finger" by fellow drivers when he passes them.

As he roared down Hennessy Road in Wan Chai, he was faced with a line of stalled traffic in front of him and a row of white and red road cones on his right, blocking him from driving along the tram lines, as he usually does. This, however, failed to deter my gruff, bespectacled, 40-something driver, so he headed straight through the cones, knocking down several in his path, and then roared along the tram line, bypassing the traffic jam and then swerving suddenly back into his lane.

Almost immediately, I become aware of a strange shuddering sensation and odd noise emanating from under the bus. He continues to drive along at 65km/h in second gear, utterly ignoring the noise and the rattling - until we come to a junction about 750 metres up the road. Here a Pakistani delivery man on a moped points at the bus's back wheel and shouts at him from across the road. My driver screams at him out the window before pulling back out into traffic and speeding up the road for another minute or two.

He then pulls over on a blind bend and gets out of the bus, calmly removes a large traffic cone trapped between the wheel and the mud guard, places it on the roadside and screeches off into the morning traffic again.

He should be grateful: how often does one encounter a genuine rage-oholic?

Atrocious grammar aside, the letter illustrates why minibus drivers don't have the best reputation.

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