Both had a week of vacation ahead of them and no real plans. On a whim, these Vaudoises, long-time friends, decided to go to Paris for a few days. “By comparing the different offers, traveling by night bus seemed economically interesting and rather practical to us,” explains one of them. This is how, last August, they boarded Lausanne in a vehicle chartered by FlixBus, with the City of Lights as their destination.
But in the middle of the night, around 2 or 3 a.m., “we were woken up by sudden steering wheel noises,” says the young woman. With their eyes now open, they noticed that the driver was flashing his headlights numerous times at a car that was traveling with its lights off. “Little by little, the car slowed to a stop. And the bus driver stopped next to him, in the left lane of the highway! He then opened the door to yell at the driver of the car. But a truck, and there were many that night, could have arrived at any moment, while the two lanes of traffic were blocked, one by the car and the other by the bus,” recalls the Vaudois.
The altercation would not have lasted very long. “But I really thought we were going to die,” says our reader. At the next stop, the young women went to ask the driver for accountability. “We found it unacceptable to endanger the lives of dozens of people, for so little. But he looked down on us and said, ‘I’m a professional, ladies. I know what I’m doing.’ Barely arriving in Paris, an hour ahead of schedule, the Vaudoises reported the case to FlixBus.
Contacted, the company explains: “The incident has indeed been reported to us and is being examined internally. We have contacted our coach partner who employs this driver to obtain their version of the incident. If it is proven that he behaved inappropriately or dangerously, he will be sanctioned.” Despite its promises to inform us of the results of the investigation at the start of the school year and our numerous reminders which followed in recent weeks, FlixBus is now playing dead.
