Passengers stranded on motorway overnight after British Megabus driver arrested
Passengers stranded on motorway overnight after British Megabus driver arrested
A BRITISH coach driver was arrested and 62 passengers left stranded overnight at a police checkpoint in Girona when it was found that another person's tachograph card had been inserted in the vehicle.
Some of the travellers booked into hotels for the night when they realised they would not be going anywhere, but around eight of them stayed on board the coach overnight and were given lifts to the railway station in Girona city the next morning by police.
Low-cost travel company Megabus.com, part of the UK-based corporation Stagecoach, was transporting the 62 passengers from Barcelona to London via Toulouse and Paris when it was pulled over during a random check on the AP-7 motorway in Maçanet de la Selva (Girona province) at 17.00hrs on Sunday.
Police found that the British driver, who was the only one on board, had used a colleague's tachograph card to make it look as though he had been on the road far less time.
Megabus.com had not provided a relief driver to share the job of what would typically involve 24 hours in a car and much more by coach, meaning the arrested man had been on the road all the way from London to the Costa Brava by the time he was caught.
While he was being questioned and charged, travellers faced a seven-hour wait before most of them decided to seek hotel rooms at around midnight.
Others were afraid a driver would appear and take off without them, so they opted to stay put, and for some it was a question of being able to afford to check into a hotel.
Megabus.com has agreed to reimburse passengers for their hotel stays and for any alternative transport they decided to take to reach their final destinations.
The driver was released with charges yesterday (Monday) morning after appearing in front of a duty judge at the court in Santa Coloma de Farners.
Stagecoach was set up in 2003 and over the next nine years opened up into the USA and Europe.
The London-Barcelona route, via the French capital and Toulouse in the south-west, opened officially on July 8 this year.
Megabus.com seeks to undercut traditional coach companies offering prices starting from two euros for 10 per cent of seats and rising thereafter in line with demand.
The firm says it is able to offer more competitive rates than other firms because its coaches have seating for 72 passengers rather than the standard 50.
