“We could watch him drive off, and he would have been able to see us still standing there in the shelter,” Ngatai claimed.
An InterCity spokesperson confirmed they received a complaint and an investigation was conducted.
“Our review found that the stop in Tokoroa was a brief boarding stop rather than a scheduled rest stop.
“The driver advised passengers that the stop would be brief and conducted a check before departing,” InterCity said.
At the time the coach departed, the driver was unaware a passenger had not reboarded.
Once the driver became aware, InterCity said action was taken to reunite the passenger with the service and ensure they could continue their journey.
“We acknowledge that this was an upsetting experience for the passenger involved and regret the distress caused.
“We do not intend to comment on individual allegations or conversations attributed to those involved and are unable to provide further detail in accordance with passenger privacy.”
‘Waving my hands frantically’
Ngatai said she had just dropped her 18-year-old son off to catch the same InterCity bus to Porirua when the incident unfolded.
“We were just saying our goodbyes, I gave him a cuddle, and then he boarded his bus.”
Moments later, a few women came from the nearby bathroom and boarded the bus, and the driver closed his doors and started to drive off.
Ngatai said the bus was about 2m away when the woman in her 60s approached them.
“I could hear this lady from behind us, and she was frantic.
“I could tell how stressed she was. She’s like, ‘No, no, no, that’s my bus, that’s my bus. I need to be on that bus’.”
Ngatai said the woman claimed she had told the driver she was going to the toilet and wouldn’t be long.
“I start waving my hands frantically. But he wasn’t paying attention.”
A woman travelling to Wellington on an InterCity bus was left panicking and stranded in the rain after the driver left her behind.
“We go into panic mode because this lady is a complete stranger to us, and she’s in panic mode. So we’re all thriving off her energy, and it’s like, ‘What are we going to do?’.”
Ngatai said they called her son, who was on the bus, to sort out a solution.
He gave the phone to the driver and asked him to turn the bus around or pull over. Ngatai said the driver told her he was on the way to Taupō.
“I proceed to tell him, ‘I’m not driving to Taupō to get her back on that bus’.
“She paid, and you’ve got her luggage. You need to do something,” Ngatai said.
The driver then pulled over and Ngatai delivered the woman to the bus.
Ngatai’s son claimed other passengers told the driver someone had not returned to the bus, and the driver allegedly responded they would have to “leave her behind”.
Ngatai said the woman’s family was grateful for the family’s assistance.
“If that was my old man, I would probably make heads roll.”
Similar incidents
The comment section of Ngatai’s Facebook post about the incident was flooded with other people’s experiences of being left behind.
“This happened to my 93-year-old mother and a young guy approx 12/13 years old, last year at the Taupo stop. The bus drove off with her purse sitting on the seat and her luggage on the rack above her,” one person wrote.
In December last year, the Herald reported that two unaccompanied minors on a seven-hour InterCity bus trip were left stranded in South Auckland, despite having tickets to disembark near the Sky Tower.
Unaccompanied minors Brielle and Livy Owen were left stranded in South Auckland after a seven-hour bus journey across the North Island.
Brielle and Livy Owen, aged 13 and 12, had taken an InterCity bus from Bulls to Auckland to see their dad.
Their mother, Erin Alberino, said the girls’ father had bought them unaccompanied minor tickets, filling out the necessary forms online for the bus company to know exactly who they were and where they were going.
“[My daughters] were like, ‘We’re lost, Mum’, they were crying, and I was like, ‘What the heck?’.”
Entrada, InterCity’s parent company, apologised to the family.