This morning I was traveling by comfortable express bus to the office, as I do 5 days a week. All went nicely on schedule, until we reached Høyden. There the bus started to drive very slowly. First I thought that we had a tractor in front of us. That happens some times on the road there, and is a minor PITA until the bus has a chance to pass it.
I looked out the front window of the bus and saw… a small forklift truck! Forklifts like this one (as far as I could tell it was an electric forklift), are not allowed on the public roads in Norway. To make things worse, the driver was wearing hearing protection with radio built in, so he couldn’t hear anything around him. The bus driver honked his horn a couple of times, without effect. Only after some serious leaning on the horn, the forklift driver suddenly realized there was something behind him and he turned on his seat (one of the reasons these vehicles are not allowed on the road must be that there are no rear-view mirrors present). He seemed surprised that a line of vehicles, led by a big-ass bus had formed behind his slow-moving forklift… I hope that his supervisor at Melheim Maskin (both the forklift and the back of his coat were marked with this company name) reads this post and has a little chat with this guy… People like this are a danger on the road! B-)