But the whole story is about him not accepting responsibility and being discontent with the consequences.
You can understand that, at least the 2nd part - quite understandable to be discontent about losing your job. As for accepting responsibility, I'm sure that at the time he thought he was doing the right thing. Even if he's a "fists first, thinking second" type of bloke I'm sure he was sincere in his actions at the time.
Later, should he have been more reflective? Would things have gone differently with his employer if he'd apologised and accepted that he shouldn't have done it but that in the heat of the moment he reacted to a passenger being robbed?
We don't know - there's nothing in the tribunal report about it.
But there is something interesting, and maybe a clue about why the disciplinary process went the way it did. The tribunal report says "
Until the events to which this hearing relates, the claimant had no disciplinary issues during his employment" but also that the disciplinary hearing considered "
records of previous safety incidents involving the claimant".
It's (too) easy to read too much into things when reading between the lines, but it looks as though it
could be that the guy had "history", which had never got as far as formal disciplinary issues (maybe it would have been better if they had?), but this was the final straw?
Anyway - speculation.
What isn't speculation though is that at least the driver did have the right to a proper hearing, to go through a proper process, to have union representation, to take the employer to an independent tribunal.
There are people on the forum who get all shouty about Labour giving employees rights. I wonder what the overlap is with those getting all shouty about this guy getting dismissed.