Footage emerges of ugly confrontation between driver and passenger on Melbourne bus

[Ulquiorra]

A FED-UP bus driver told a passenger her “sense of entitlement is just disturbing” after she stormed the bus and abused him for not picking her up.

The confrontation took place on a Melbourne service on Sunday evening and lasted more than five minutes. The driver left his seat to scold the woman as she took him to task for making her run from one stop to the next.

A passenger on the 508 towards Alphington, in Melbourne’s northeast, shared his footage of the incident with news.com.au. He said the back-and-forth only ended when the passenger disembarked.

“As she got on the bus, straight away she claimed he ignored her or missed her at her stop,” he said.

“She lost her s**t. She was filming him the whole time. She was just yelling out and others were telling her to shut up, saying she does it all the time.”

Footage of the incident shows the driver becoming increasingly agitated.

“I’m not driving,” he tells her.

“I don’t care, I’m not getting off, call the police … I was at the stop,” she responds.

“You weren’t there, then you charged the bus and called me a piece of s**t.”

“You are a piece of sh*t.”

“Then why are you on the bus?” he asks her.

The passenger tells him it’s “not the first time you’ve done this to me” and orders him to “just drive, you’re holding everyone up”.

Other commuters can be heard coming to the driver’s aid.

“He’s doing his job and you’re calling him a piece of s**t?” one asks.

“She calls people piece of s**t … she has trouble with everybody,” another passenger responds.

Police were called but the passenger got off the bus before they arrived. The man who filmed the incident said he did so because he was worried it would get out of hand.

“I decided to film it for evidence. She was filming it too,” he said.

He said it was frustrating for the 12 or so commuters who just wanted to get going again, but that the woman’s behaviour was clearly over the top.

A spokesman for Public Transport Victoria said “everyone has the right to a safe working environment”.

“Bus drivers do an important job getting us where we need to go, and we ask that people treat them with respect.”

This driver is not alone in copping abuse from passengers.

According to Queensland’s Sunshine Coast Daily, one driver was spat on and tormented for 30 minutes in April.

Transport Workers’ Union Queensland branch secretary Peter Biagini said he was disturbed by the reports.

“One of our members was set upon while just doing his job, with a number of youths swearing at and intimidating passengers before turning their attention to him,” Mr Biagini said.

“For a bus driver to keep their cool while being spat on, intimidated and attempting to draw them into a physical confrontation highlights their absolute professionalism in what can be an exceptionally difficult job.”

In other instances, commuters have turned on each other. A vile, racist rant was filmed on a Frankston line train in March.

Two girls launched a blistering, lengthy, race-fuelled attack on a woman in her 60s, who told news.com.au she was told “go back to your own f***ing country” despite being an Australian citizen.

Mila, a 66-year-old woman who moved to Melbourne from the Philippines, said she was minding her own business on a trip to visit a sick friend when she began “coughing from time to time”.

She said one of the girls looked at her, as if “trying to intimidate me”.

“The girl, she keeps staring at me. After a while I asked her to stop looking at me and that’s when the other girl started yelling,” Mila said.

Footage of the attack shows the situation quickly escalate.

“So what (if we look at you), who gives a f**k?” one of them shouts. When Mila responds, the attacks continue.

“Make me shut up, b**ch. I ain’t gonna shut up. I ain’t never gonna shut up, c**t.”

Neither of the two girls were disciplined over the incident.