I'm not sure who's in charge of PR for the bus industry, but they're not doing a very good job. Because: at what point did "the bus" become THE go-to vehicle in extreme what-if scenarios? I'm referring to the twin allusions of busdom, as follows:

When someone is made a scapegoat, he or she is "thrown under the bus."

Similarly, when offering examples of why one should do something perhaps a bit whimsical - a sudden decision to have a weekend in San Francisco, perhaps, or to go ahead and order the triple-fudge explosion for dessert - the argument to act on such things is, "Hey, who knows, I might get hit by a bus tomorrow!"

We are also guilty, inasmuch as we're the goofballs who continually fall back on bus clichés.

Let's try to be a bit more creative going forward. I suggest a few alternatives:

1. "Jimmy got fired. They threw that poor guy under a truck carrying a nuclear warhead earmarked for Yemen."

2. "I'm going to buy a surfboard instead of paying my income tax. Why not? Tomorrow I might fall off the surfboard and get gnawed in half by a shark."

3. "I got a job driving for Greyhound, so no matter what horrible accident might befall me, people won't be able to say I got thrown under the bus because I was driving it.