A BUS EIREANN driver very generously turned his bus around once he was informed by an elderly woman that she was on the wrong route.
Joe Carroll, a 41-year-old father of two, was 15 minutes into his journey from Limerick to Cork when a worried-looking pensioner came to tell him that she had accidentally gotten on the wrong bus.
After explaining the situation to his passengers, Joe decided to turn the bus around and return the woman to the station.
The woman explained that she wanted to travel to Galway, and Joe even radioed ahead to the depot to make sure that a bus would be held for her.
Kind-hearted Joe Carroll went the extra mile to help out an elderly woman who had mistakenly stepped on to the wrong busFellow passengers on the bus took to social media to praise Joe, but the hero-driver insists he didn’t expect any, claiming that it was “just the right thing to do.”
Speaking to CorkBeo, he said: “Mallow is the last stop before you get to Cork, so I went up the Mallow road and she was like, ‘I’m on the wrong bus!’”
“She told me she meant to go to Galway, I thought for a minute because the Galway bus passed me, so I radioed in and tried to get him to wait up at the stop.
“So I turned back and then I saw the bus driver pulling off from the Mallow stop when I was getting there. I probably would have kept going after him until I stopped him.
“Luckily they got the radio in and they stopped him and she was able to get on with her journey.
“I didn’t think much of it at the time but I just did it automatically, that’s the kind of person I am.”
News of his kind-hearted gesture spread quickly and strangely enough, Joe spotted the story online and didn’t realise it was about him until he started reading it.
“I saw the story on Facebook and thought - that’s a nice thing for a bus driver to do - and then realised it was about me!” He said.
“I got loads of thanks on the day and since but I just thought it was the right thing to do.
“We’ll all be old someday and she was so grateful.”
Well said, Joe!
