A bus driving at an unbelievable speed, a horse frightened and a doctor tossed to the ground. If the year hadn?t been 1908, and the speed a ripping six miles per hour, it would have been your typical Bermuda traffic accident complete with outraged letters to the newspaper.

It sounds like an unremarkably minor event in Bermuda?s traffic history, but it actually led to the banning of all motorcars from Bermuda?s roads for more than 30 years.

This is one of the many fascinating stories in ?The Buses of Bermuda? a new non-fiction book by British writers Colin Pomeroy and Michael J. Herbert.

Mr. Pomeroy and Mr. Herbert were on the Island this week for the release of their new book that is sponsored by the Public Transportation Board (PTB).

In addition to signing books in department stores, they also presented a copy to Warwick Academy Primary Four students who are studying transportation, and they gave a speech at the Sandys Rotary Club, because Mr. Herbert is a Rotarian.

?Everybody knows that public buses were allowed on our roads in 1946,? said Mr. Pomeroy. ?What a lot of people don?t realise is that there were buses here as early as 1908. There was an old chain drive called the ?Scarlet Runner?.?

According to ?The Buses of Bermuda? the unfortunate 12-seater ?Scarlet Runner? bus which frightened a horse in January 1908, was owned by Mr. Harley Gush Walter Spurling.

A petition calling for the banning of motor vehicles was started by famed American writer Mark Twain and future American president Woodrow Wilson, who were frequent visitors to the Island.

The campaign was successful and in 1908 the Motorcar Act was passed. It kept almost all types of motor vehicles off Bermuda?s roads for more than 30 years.

?That was the catalyst behind the famous Motorcar Act of May 1908 which banned all motor vehicles apart from ambulances, fire engines and grading machines right up until the Second World War,? said Mr. Pomeroy. ?It was a vested interest of the horse owners.?

He said the pressures of the Second World War eventually forced Bermuda to introduce motorcars.

?We couldn?t cope without motorcars on the roads,? Mr. Pomeroy said. ?The Commonwealth countries started to use lorries and then that broke the mould.?

Today, Bermuda has five buses to every 1.5 miles.

?The Buses of Bermuda? contains many pictures of old Bermuda buses and their drivers, including the ?Scarlet Runner? right up to the present day. The original buses were green; they weren?t painted pink and blue until 1966.

Mr. Pomeroy?s writing partner, Mr. Herbert, is a retired traffic police officer who lives in Edinstowe, Nottinghamshire, England. He became involved in the project because he has family living on the Island.

?I am a bus fanatic,? he said. ?Buses are my hobby. I have been interested in buses since I was a child.?

He loves them so much he drives public buses for charity, and is the subeditor of a magazine called ?PSV Circle? for an enthusiasts? group for the public service vehicle industry.

Mr. Pomeroy said he is more of a general transportation fan. In his home near Dorchester in the south of England he is well-known as an authoritative writer on military history and transportation. He is the author of two other Bermuda books including ?The Bermuda Railway ? Gone, but not Forgotten? and ?The Flying Boats of Bermuda?.

?Most of the body or story of the book is mine,? said Mr. Pomeroy. ?At the back there is all these lists of all the buses that have ever been in Bermuda. Most of that is Mike?s. We worked as a team. I started in 1991 when I wrote the Bermuda Railroad book. In 2000 I wrote the flying boat book. On both occasions, local stamp enthusiast Horst Augustinovic wrote about stamps for the book.

The Bermuda bus book was the brainchild of PTB director Dan Simmons who bought a copy of one of Mr. Pomeroy?s previous books to read on an airline flight.

?He knew Mr. Augustinovic, and he told him how much he enjoyed the book,? Mr. Pomeroy said. ?He said he wished he could get someone to do the same with Bermuda buses. Mr. Augustinovic said he would ask me and that is how it came about. The first books I did out of my own choice and this third one was because I was asked.?

Mr. Pomeroy first became familiar with Bermuda as a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot. Later, in the late 80s and early 90s, Mr. Pomeroy?s son was here with the police on secondment from the United Kingdom.

?I came out here with my wife to visit him, and saw the railway trail,? said Mr. Pomeroy. ?I went to the library to get a book about it, and there wasn?t one. So I sat down and wrote one.?

Since then ?The Bermuda Railway? has been so successful it has just been reprinted. The Flying Boat book has also done well by Bermuda standards, selling about 2,000 copies.

?They are published in Bermuda, but people from abroad often buy them,? said Mr. Pomeroy. ?Many Americans who were here with the military have bought ?The Flying Boats of Bermuda?.?

Mr. Herbert said so far, sponsors PTB are very happy with the book.

Herman Basden, Director of the PTB from 1976 to 2001, wrote in the forward of the book: ??The Buses of Bermuda? has given us an additional dimension. It allows us to look back nearly a century ago and eavesdrop on the interplay among traders, the general public and the government of the day. It debunks some long held but erroneous convictions and brings a sense of perspective, structure and clarity to the development of the PTB.?

Mr. Herbert said the PTB will be presenting a free copy of the book to all their retired members. This is fitting since local bus drivers and their families helped to make the bus happen.

?If it hadn?t been for the PTB drivers we wouldn?t have gotten a hold of a lot of the story,? he said. ?When we came and started the research we put an add in their in-house magazine and we received quite a bit of information from that. They have been very helpful helping us with our research.?

Mr. Pomeroy said the bus book and his other two books about Bermuda, are the only real authoritative books on Bermuda?s transportation history.

?There have been pictures books, but these are the only three technical books on the subject,? he said. ?They are not technical to the extent of being boring. I have tried to write it as a story.

?You will find pictures in there of boats that brought the buses in. There are a couple of pictures of the modern ferries just to show that it is not just a bus in isolation.?

The writers said they are both fans of Bermuda buses, and like to ride the bus when they visit Bermuda.

?They are the only buses I know of in the world that are pink,? said Mr. Herbert. ?Within the world of buses it is a fleet to be envied in that it is very modern. It is run very efficiently. The average age of the buses is now five and a half years old. Eighty percent of them are air-conditioned.?

He thought that Bermuda bus fares are comparable to those in the United Kingdom.

?The facilities, the passes and the cheap rides for old age pensioners are world renowned,? he said. ?It is a good service for that.?

Mr. Pomeroy said it sometimes takes the eye of an outsider to notice certain things, like the smiles of local bus drivers, or the way that people on Bermuda buses usually don?t push to get off.

?It is a smart way to see the Island,? he said. ?It is the way forward. Modern transport needs to move more people. When the big ferries come next year there is going to be a lot of people wanting to get from Dockyard into town. The buses are going to have to move them. That is why I think it is a good idea that you have all the high quality vehicles that you have now.?

The writers said the next big leap forward for Bermuda transportation will be the new bus terminal to be completed next summer.