{"id":410966,"date":"2026-05-04T07:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T07:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/410966\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T07:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T07:59:09","slug":"long-time-warkworth-school-bus-driver-says-speed-phones-causing-drivers-to-cross-centre-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/410966\/","title":{"rendered":"Long-time Warkworth school bus driver says speed, phones causing drivers to cross centre line"},"content":{"rendered":"

He said in the past week alone, there have been three situations where speeding and distracted drivers have crossed on to the wrong side of the narrow country road.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s horrific. The cars just speed around the corners. I can\u2019t do much because it\u2019s narrow country lanes so there are ditches and things so I can\u2019t pull over that far.\u201d<\/p>\n

The driver, who has had 50 years\u2019 experience driving buses and trucks, recently installed his own Go-Pro dashboard camera after a near-miss with a driver who was \u201cmost likely on their phone\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis guy was fully in my lane … he was looking down most probably on his phone and I had to honk.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looked up and looked really scared and swerved back into his lane.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was preparing to have to swing the bus to the left to try [to] avoid him.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said there were no school children on board this time, thankfully.<\/p>\n

However, another incident happened the day after when a ute travelled at \u201chorrendous speed\u201d and nearly toppled as it came around a corner towards the bus full of schoolchildren.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought he was being chased by the police, he was going so fast, he swung around on two wheels,\u201d the bus driver said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA good half of his car was in my lane. I moved sharply to the left and slowed down and honked, he just sped off.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bus driver told the Herald he\u2019s surprised none of the buses had company-provided dashcams.<\/p>\n

He then notified the well-known Warkworth bus company about the need to install a camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll they said was \u2018as long as you don\u2019t film the children,\u2019 which of course I won\u2019t \u2013 it\u2019s pointed towards the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man believed tougher fines for speedsters and phone-users would help reduce accidents and near-misses.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Australia, they\u2019re thousands of dollars, here they\u2019re just $150, which is a joke because it\u2019s not stopping people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The old highway, which used to have a 100km speed limit before it was downgraded to 80km, has been a hot spot for accidents in the past.<\/p>\n

The P\u016bhoi to Warkworth motorway opened in June 2023<\/a> with the aim to be a newer, safer and more resilient route for drivers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He said in the past week alone, there have been three situations where speeding and distracted drivers have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,51,30482,11519,1550,31742,17353,5981,19552,15211,2842,48947,2454,424,15220,9851,53399,3180,111,43,139,69,2063,17944,8145,312,4062,13109,25093,61,111476],"class_list":["post-410966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-auckland","tag-bus","tag-causing","tag-centre","tag-considered","tag-cross","tag-daily","tag-driver","tag-drivers","tag-experienced","tag-fearing","tag-industry","tag-life","tag-line","tag-longtime","tag-misses","tag-near","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-phones","tag-quitting","tag-run","tag-says","tag-school","tag-several","tag-speed","tag-to","tag-warkworth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410966","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=410966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}