Shocking footage has captured the moment a bus driver collided with a shirtless pedestrian after stopping to help a car stopped at the side of the road.
The bus driver was transporting a group of tourists back from a day trip to Uluru, in the Northern Territory, at 7pm on Monday.
The vehicle was traveling along Lasseter Highway when the driver noticed a car stopped on the side of the road with its hazard lights flashing.
The driver stopped the bus so he could get off and assess the situation before things quickly escalated.
Shocked tourists on board the bus said a family appeared to be arguing and that a drunk and shirtless man had stepped in front of the bus as it came to a stop.
In video footage of the incident, passengers can be heard screaming
“Many passengers were yelling at them to get back on the bus, but he didn’t respond,” passenger Raylene Foster told the bus. ABC.
It is understood the young man boarded the bus shirtless and asked for a lift to Alice Springs.
Video footage shows the driver shouting for the man to get off, and the passengers on board the bus shouting and shuffling.
Passenger Bianca Hammersley said the driver grabbed the man to push him out, causing a fight to break out between the two.
Ms Hammersley said the driver and the young man then fell from the bus and landed forcefully on the ground.
Terrified passengers tried to separate the fighting couple and begged the driver to take the man to the next town.
After dropping the young man off at Curtin Springs, the bus continued to Erldunda Roadhouse, where police were informed of the incident.
Passengers waited for two hours in the heat without air conditioning or lights until another bus company came to help.
Tasmanian emergency nurse Courtney Hayes said the driver showed signs of concussion, drove erratically and spoke aggressively to the tourists on board.
She also said he had eye injuries and possible jaw and lip injuries.
“If he had presented to a hospital this would have been a situation where he could no longer drive,” Ms Hayes said.
Passenger Bianca Hammersley (right) said a young man and a bus driver got into an argument on board the bus before falling out and falling to the ground
The passengers said the man complained of sore ribs from the heated brawl.
Ms Foster said the bus driver had lost his glasses during the scuffle and asked passengers to sit at the front of the bus to “be his vision”.
“There was an incident where there were about four cattle on the road that he didn’t see and passengers were screaming,” she said.
She said passengers were “absolutely scared for our lives.”
Ms Hammersley said she and other passengers are still scared days after the incident.
“I don’t sleep very well… I wake up in the middle of the night and all I hear is the screaming,” she said.
The terrifying situation has led to some tourists vowing never to return to Alice Springs.
Some passengers on board the bus said they would never return to Alice Springs after the terrifying incident (Picture: Uluru)
Emu Run Experience said in a statement to the ABC that the bus driver had stopped because he witnessed a “violent assault and domestic violence situation” occurring at the side of the road.
“(The) driver appropriately assisted in de-escalating the matter and was physically assaulted by an intoxicated individual during this action,” the company said.
But passengers who witnessed the incident do not believe the situation was related to domestic violence.
Some of the disturbed passengers wrote a letter to management expressing their concerns about the driver’s erratic behavior.
An Emu Run Experience manager apologized to the group in response and assured them that an investigation was being carried out ‘to ensure this does not happen again’.
In the six years I have been working at Emu Run, we have never experienced anything like this,” the email said.
Emu Run Experience said it had reported the matter to Northern Territory Worksafe and Northern Territory Police.
Northern Territory police said “no complaints” had been made to police from either party involved.