A bus driver nearly struck a UF graduate student on campus Tuesday afternoon.
At about 2 p.m., the student — 31-year-old Hui Zhi — was walking with her bicycle near the intersection of Union Road and Newell Drive when the driver of a Regional Transit System bus crashed into her rear wheel while turning right onto Newell Drive.
The international communications master’s student thought the bus would have enough space to avoid her, and once she realized she needed to move away, it was too late.
Bus 38 hit her bike’s back wheel, popping the tire and denting the rim, but its owner escaped unharmed.
Though she was uninjured, Zhi said she was shaken and upset that her bike was damaged.
“I need my bike to commute,” she said. “I ride it every day.”
She was also frustrated that her run-in with the bus interrupted her journey to Library West to work on her master’s thesis.
After the accident, the bus driver comforted Zhi to make sure she was OK, Zhi said. She hoped the driver wouldn’t face repercussions.
“The bus driver was really nice,” Zhi said. “She tried to calm me down. I feel like things got taken care of; it should be fine.”
Chip Skinner, the marketing and communications supervisor for RTS, said no citations were issued for the bus driver. In Zhi’s statement to University Police, she said the driver wasn’t at fault, Skinner said.
“(Zhi) was transported by RTS back to where she lived,” he said.
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