Wrong way bus driver charged with careless driving

The bus was snapped going the wrong way around a busy roundabout. Photo / Jono Norton

Police have charged an Auckland bus driver, who took his passengers on a shortcut on the wrong side of the road at a motorway interchange yesterday morning, with careless driving.

His employer, NZ Bus, has also suspended him while it investigates the incident.

"NZ Bus is taking the incident seriously and have stood the driver down pending a formal investigation," the company's northern operations manager, Shane McMahon, said this afternoon.

A police spokeswoman said the man had been charged with careless driving and given a summons to appear in North Shore District Court in a fortnight.

A commuter on the bus told the NZME. News Service yesterday that because cars were blocking the entrance to a roundabout on the eastern side of the Greville Rd motorway interchange, the driver had saved his passengers a 30-minute delay.

But an Auckland Transport spokesman disputed that estimate, and said that although yesterday morning's wet weather slowed traffic movements across the city, the council body was unaware of any special problems at the interchange.

A man who photographed the incident said the bus pulled out in front of him, across double yellow lanes, before driving down the wrong side of the road for 50 to 100 metres and going around the roundabout the wrong way.