She said the driver stopped the bus and checked on her but offered no apology, while another passenger helped her with slow breathing exercises.<\/p>\n
She stayed on the bus for 10 minutes before getting off a stop earlier than intended to see if her local physiotherapist could help.<\/p>\n
She was referred to OneHealth accident and medical, where she was prescribed painkillers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was still in a lot of pain and didn\u2019t sleep much that night so I called my GP the next day \u2026 I went and saw her and she told me to get an X-ray.\u201d<\/p>\n
The X-ray showed a compression fracture in her lower back, with full recovery expected to take 8-12 weeks. <\/p>\n
The woman contacted Auckland Transport (AT) a few days later to let them know what happened and request compensation for medical fees, which she said have amounted to over $200.<\/p>\n
An AT spokesperson told her \u201cACC will cover most of the medical bills\u201d and that the Howick and Eastern operators should be responsible for the reimbursement.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowick and Eastern [the branch] have got back to me and said the CCTV cameras were down that day and that they need footage as evidence to claim insurance,\u201d the woman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a customer of AT \u2026 their insurance claim and footage have nothing to do with me and I am not responsible for those things. I blame Auckland Transport not the Howick line.”<\/p>\n
An Auckland Transport spokesperson has since responded to the Herald\u2019s request for comment and said: \u201cThe safety of customers is paramount and AT, along with our operator, apologise to the customer for the injuries incurred while on board one of our buses. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur operator has investigated this incident thoroughly and has agreed to a goodwill payment to the customer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The passenger has been taking ACC-provided taxis to get to work. <\/p>\n
She said while she planned to return to using the bus once recovered, she had a message of caution for bus drivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cBe careful especially of older people using the buses \u2026 maybe wait until we are sat down before moving.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She said the driver stopped the bus and checked on her but offered no apology, while another passenger…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[169501,51,1863,9218,27126,46300,30482,169500,82167,802,124,6097,105873,42,78,2513,3523,43,24808,14734,3109,31145,61,6382,40,38,41,39,112,1316,1299,1533,1354],"class_list":{"0":"post-311522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-71yo","9":"tag-auckland","10":"tag-back","11":"tag-before","12":"tag-break","13":"tag-broke","14":"tag-bus","15":"tag-compensate","16":"tag-compensated","17":"tag-costs","18":"tag-could","19":"tag-down","20":"tag-excruciating","21":"tag-headlines","22":"tag-in","23":"tag-lower","24":"tag-medical","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-older","27":"tag-passenger","28":"tag-public","29":"tag-suffered","30":"tag-to","31":"tag-took","32":"tag-top-news","33":"tag-top-stories","34":"tag-topnews","35":"tag-topstories","36":"tag-transport","37":"tag-when","38":"tag-who","39":"tag-will","40":"tag-woman"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}