Metro Bus Driver Safety Concerns: A Veteran’s Perspective
Metro Bus Driver Safety Concerns
Response to workstation survey
Leave the turn signals where they are. Although to be ergonomically correct, they should be moved so that the right and left feet are in the same position, both in terms of angle and placement from the seat.
It would be nice if the steering wheel went properly low, so that one’s elbows were actually above the hub of the wheel while sitting upright and correctly. As it is now, that is impossible. I use a 3” high pad on the seat, and I still am often not above the hub of the steering wheel while sitting in a proper position.
An additional problem with the seats is that at least half of them are mounted so the steering wheel is not centered.
Another problem is that the lever for adjusting the height of the steering wheel is placed on the left side, which means that it digs into your leg. I have a constant bruise just below my knee from this.
Information systems should be junked. The radio with 50 different option buttons, levels of information, etc… If we are not supposed to text/make cellphone calls while driving (which I agree with entirely), why is it okay to design a system that requires the same kind of activity on the radio? I am not able to use the fare/trip/etc. while driving; it’s too complex and requires my eyes to be on the screen and not on the road. This was designed by people who sit at stationary desks, not moving vehicles, and as such should only be used by them and not subject drivers to this dangerous, possibly grievance-able piece of equipment.
Wipers don’t work on 80% of the buses. At least 20% of the window reached by the wipers is not wiped. Unsafe in any but dry weather conditions.
NO to digital dashboard. No more additional bells and whistles, no more distractions from what I am supposed to be doing: driving safely down the road and picking up people to deliver them SAFELY where they would like to go. There is nothing wrong with analogue dashboards; what’s not broken does not need to be fixed.
All switches, toggles, cupholders, and gear shifts should be ergonomically set in front of the driver’s shoulder. I drive with the seat all the way forward. I am often in pain from a day’s work reaching behind me to get to the hillholder/flashers/etc. Some seats don’t go far enough forward, and the switches are still behind my torso. This is not right.
Male 5’8” 146lbs
The driver’s set up is getting more and more incorrect. In Fall 2011, I was nearly crippled with pain from driving 40′ low floors. The pain was sufficient that I used a great deal of sick leave but began to think that between Metro literally endangering my physical being and having no interest in solving some rather simple problems (I have been commenting on the seats for 20 years and heard the reply ‘We’re not going to change the seating’- i.e. Go to h….. from Metro officially), that I am considering quitting because the discomfort is just not worth it. And Metro just really doesn’t care.
Jay Hamilton #4477
32.5 years of service
Safety whole cloth or not much at all.
Summary:
Metro, ATU587, The City of Seattle, King County Council. None are really concerned with safety.
The average lifespan, after retirement, of a retired full-time Bus Driver for Metro is 2 years. It has been 2 years for the last 15, maybe 20 years. This despite healthy incentives, smoking, drinking, cholesterol information, and a range of ‘lifestyle’ changes that are supposed to have occurred during those years.
What has changed?
I began to drive part-time in 1979. The population of Seattle proper was 493,846 {493846 people (1980 estimate)}. Today? 608660 people (2010 estimate). This is an 81% increase. The county 1,931,249 people (2010)
Today the county has grown 26.52% more = 13,096,796 – in other words, the increase is more than the population of Seattle in 1980.
More cars, faster speed limits. An example of not caring about safety on Seattle’s part. When I began to drive, if you drove at 19.5 miles per hour down 2nd Avenue, you would make every light until Main Street. Now with more traffic (cars, pedestrians, and bicycles), you had better go 24.5 or even 29 mph to make every light. An increase of 5 mph increases the number of accidents by 10%. (European Road Safety Observatory says that the risk increases by 1%- 4% for every km; 5 mph = 8.1 km/ph= 16+% increase in risk of accidents).
A very simple example at Metro (I will get to a much more complex issue in a moment). 80% of the windshield wipers on our buses do not clear the surface traversed by those wipers. Translation: during the rainy season in Seattle, 80% of the drivers in buses cannot clearly see some part of the road due to what the wipers leave on the window.
A much more complex example. Recently, a new radio system has been installed on our buses. It is supposed to locate us, call out stops (for ADA requirements), and the radio is our link to help in various situations, from simple “I’m blocked what do I do?” to emergencies and “someone is dying”. It, so far, doesn’t work very well. If safety was Metro’s main concern, why install something and after it has replaced what worked fairly well (not great) discover that it makes it more difficult to get the information to drivers that drivers need, aid for those needs, answers. If this were a matter of the announcements being wrong (which they are, frequently or worse misleading but sort of correct) that would be annoying; this is not the case, as drivers, at the moment, our safety is compromised by the current installation of the radio and GPS systems. Not to mention that if you have information that will help other drivers, you can’t get on the radio to give it to the coordinator; they don’t, can’t, won’t answer in a timely manner.
But the supply of road space here is tighter than in most U.S. cities, and getting inexorably more crowded through population growth, road projects, and office campuses — including maybe a third Sodo sports complex coming mid-decade. Downtown lacks even one north-south bikeway safe for novice or nonathletic riders. The city doesn’t have any major bike projects downtown this year but will consider ideas in a pending update of the cycling master plan.
Originally published February 18, 2012 at 3:32 PM | Page modified February 18, 2012 at 4:10 PM
Seattle Times transportation reporter
Add to this the seat problem
Add to this that during the Bush/Reagan years, the national CDL came into existence. And with it, rules limiting drivers to 8 hours. SYSCO, FSA, etc. have to follow this rule. Metro went and got an exemption, so cans of tomatoes are more important than people. We have drivers driving 12-16 hour days. Why is this acceptable? It is certainly not safe, and it is most certainly an element of the reason for shorter lifespans of retired drivers, the reason for bad attitudes among drivers (though in this case drivers want the longer hours -‘overtime’ still doesn’t mean that it’s safe.) And this is unsafety on both Metro and the union’s part.
Union seniority: it is the bulwark of unionism.
A} However, when it comes to training, almost none of the ‘trainers’ have been trained to train. None, or nearly so, have they been presented with pedagogical materials on how to teach or how people learn. I have had ‘education’ meetings where the trainers could not pronounce the words on the PowerPoint screen, much less know what those words meant. How can it be conceivable that beginning drivers will be confident of their knowledge and skills if the trainers don’t know how to teach?
B} A very badly executed new radio system has been installed. During my training session to learn how to use it, none of the trainers knew anything about it; basically, they just read the screens, and when we tried to ‘experience’ the system on mock-ups, the session descended into second-grade antics. BUT again, because of seniority, the best coordinators (those manning the radio- the driver’s back-up and main source of help) abandoned that post, and the least senior people ended up with the positions, with regrettable results. I was told during the fall shake-up twice that ‘we’re pretty busy up here’ and disconnected [no help and when is it not pretty busy on the radio?] One time I was told that I couldn’t do something according to the contract that in fact was just not true. I called in a blockage, and the radio person didn’t know where 43rdNE and NE45th was, and after figuring it out, did nothing so that other drivers got stuck by the blockage. I was once asked to take a bus back to the base, and when I explained that I had never done that and could he just tell me the street to turn on, he couldn’t do it and refused and disconnected me. (There’s more and worse, but I hope I’ve made my point) Drivers should not have to rely on the incompetent for our safety; no one should be placed in a position that is so crucial to the safe operation of transit who is not totally competent and knowledgeable about the system. In this case, seniority should not be the basis for assigning this work.