A few weeks ago I was taken prisoner by ACTION.

Boozy rock shows are not conducive to driving home so I planned to catch the bus and get a taxi home.

If, like me, years can pass between the times you darken a bus door it’s worth knowing that Google Maps’ public transport route mapping is a thing of technological wonder.

Tell it where you want to go and it tells you when you need to start walking, where the bus stop is, what bus you need to catch and when it will be there, where to change buses and where to get off, all the while tracking where you’re at on the map as the journey progresses.

Where I came a cropper was that the number 3 bus from O’Connor terminated pretty much on the front doorstep of The Basement.

My previous experience with public transport led me to naively believe that at a terminating stop a bus would come to a stop and the doors would open.

Instead the bus whipped past the venue, the stop, and dived headlong into the bus depot.

At this point I hit the stop button, stood up, and the bus driver exclaimed his surprise to discover there was still a passenger on the bus.

But now it was too late, we were in the depot, where Health and Safety rules.

I could not simply be let off the bus to walk out of the facility. I was not wearing a high-visibility vest.

In the event that I wandered under a bus my driver would be in an enormous amount of trouble as he explained to me while giving every impression this difficult situation was entirely my fault.

Instead I had to traipse behind the driver through the depot as he went through his end-of-shift procedures and then sought higher guidance.

That guidance suggested he escort me from the depot, but which meant further end-of-shift procedures before, eventually, I could be driven to the gates of the depot.

I suppose I could have made a run for freedom, but I didn’t actually want to get anyone in trouble.

It would be easy enough to put it down to “Health and Safety gone mad” and to laugh at health and safety rules.

The chances of me falling off a chair while changing a light bulb are very low, but spread that risk across a population of millions and it’s a lot of people filling up the emergency wards and graveyards.

In the Bureau of Statistics’ latest (2013) data for causes-of-death places, accidental falls in 18th place with 1920 fatalities a year. “Intentional self harm” is in 14th, with 2520.

Blokes wearing black running around unfamiliar bus depots at night might think they’re a low risk of ending up under a bus, but if enough of us were doing it there would be some gruesome incidents.

So, this is not a criticism of a worthy health and safety focus, rather a celebration of it.

But perhaps, just perhaps, a tweaking of procedure could be considered for the liberation of passengers who find themselves whisked into the depot.