A BUS driver had no idea he had driven into a pedestrian until he was arrested by police a few days later.

Michael Wyatt, 67, of Lyminster Avenue, Brighton, accidentally struck a man walking back from hospital in the dark, breaking the pedestrian’s hand and cracking his bus’s windscreen.

He stopped at the next layby due to the cracked windscreen but could not see any sign of an accident and thought he had hit some foliage, he claimed.

After reporting the damage to his bosses, he drove back to the depot, oblivious to the fact that a passing driver had stopped to help the pedestrian.

Wyatt pleaded guilty to failing to stop and report a road traffic accident to police before Brighton Magistrates on Thursday. He was fined and given points on his licence.

Defending, Cerys Sayer said it did not even ‘enter his head, as a man of good character, that he had done anything wrong’ until the police turned up.

The accident happened on October 9 on the B2112 Lunce’s Hill as Wyatt drove his number 40x route between Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill.

Ms Sayer added: “He should have walked back up the road and called police. That’s the thing that he has done wrong.

“He is of retirement age but continues to work as he likes to be productive.”

District judge Teresa Szagun said the bus driver was ‘extremely remorseful’ about the impact on the victim.

She told him: “There was nothing suggested about the quality of your driving or that you would have seen the individual given the way he was walking.”

She added: “But the fact remains that you should have stopped and made extra enquiries and reported it to the police as a result of the damage to your vehicle.

“You did report it to work. It’s not that you were trying to hide responsibility.”

She ordered him to pay a total £525 in fines and court costs, and gave him seven penalty points on his licence.