Bus 1, Car 0

Driving these big yellow boxes, one thinks about Sir Isaac Newton a lot. When accelerating, when stopping, when turning, when approaching kids on the sidewalk. You know, mass and inertia, objects in motion and all of that. Most of all, though, one thinks about 17 tons versus one ton. As in, collision.

Luckily, although the thought of it is constantly with them, most school bus drivers never have to face the reality. The opportunity is out there, to be sure; all bus drivers have their share of stories about near misses, of car drivers somehow failing to see them ("we're big, we're yellow, and we have lights all over us; what's hard to see?") and pulling out in front of them, or changing lanes into them, or running stop signs or traffic lights. And all too often, the cars' drivers are on their cell phones. (How else to understand overlooking our behemoths?) Scary stories, but thankfully mostly near misses.

A week ago Tuesday the worry became my reality.

I was driving on a 4 lane divided expressway.  I had just picked up the last of my middle-schoolers and was headed for their school to let them off. I had turned on to the expressway only a quarter mile earlier, so I was still accelerating, probably doing 30-35 m.p.h. on my way up to the 45 m.p.h. limit. As I approached a minor intersecting two lane residential street, I saw a car decelerating towards the stop sign, i.e., behaving in way that looked pretty ordinary, but then it started accelerating into Parkway, and directly into my path!  I swerved to the left, thinking at the time that the other driver still had time to stop if they had my now-vacated right lane to use.  (Fortunately I knew the left lane was empty, so swerving was a relatively safe option.)  Instead, the car kept coming and plowed into the middle of my bus's side. 

It was amazing how quickly it all happened.

I heard the crash more than felt it, and fortunately my control of the bus was never in doubt.

I immediately pulled back into the right lane and parked against the curb. My first thought was for the kids, of course, but they all seemed to be okay.  Still, I asked, and they all said they were okay.  So then I radioed our central dispatch (which alerts police and rescue), and set out my reflective triangles.  Before I finished that task, the police and an ambulance arrived (we were only a quarter mile from their shared regional headquarters). 

It was only then that I looked at the car that hit us.  It was about 150 yards behind me, and its entire front end had been destroyed -- utterly destroyed; even the engine was damaged and deformed.  (Fortunately, the passenger compartment was perfectly intact, and the driver's only injury came from the airbag.)  The car was a fairly new Nissan Versa.

By comparison, the bus suffered little damage.  One tire and its rim were ruined, and there was sheet metal damage along the side, but all of that was below the level of the main frame and there was no structural damage at all.  Once the wheel and tire were changed, it drove normally.

Score: Bus 1, car 0!

I really don't think I could have done anything differently.  There was too little time to stop, or even decelerate significantly; maneuvering to avoid was the only real option. Had I not swerved, I might have run into the side of the car, especially if I had tried braking, in which case there would have been a good chance that I would have killed the driver, or at least seriously injured her.

There were no skid marks from the car.  Frankly, I don't think the driver saw me until the bus flashed in front of her.  My guess - and it's only that, a guess - is that she was on a cell phone.  Like I said, she was coming from a minor residential street while I was on a major one - it's the sort of intersection where a driver on the lesser road just naturally expects to stop for the fast-moving, heavy traffic of the major road.  If she wasn't distracted by a cell phone, it's hard to imagine why she did what she did.  I mean, it's not as if a 40 foot long, 17 ton brick-shaped yellow box with lights on is hard to miss!

As for my reaction ... some of the other bus drivers asked me later if I was OK (in the sense of not being so rattled I couldn't work, or some such) but it didn't affect me much at all, really.

It all happened faster than I could react emotionally (e.g., I was initially too busy to feel anything, and the adrenaline hit well after the fact). After it was over and I thought back on it, I couldn't see anything I did that I wished I could have done differently, nor did I have any regrets about what I did do.  So it wasn't upsetting or scary or anything like that. 

It did help, I think, that when the police and my boss arrived on the scene and surveyed the scene, they were very matter-of-fact and didn't criticize or comment on my actions directly or indirectly at all.

It made for an interesting morning. Besides, one student aboard told me she didn't really want to go to first period math anyway.

Citizen drivers

A couple of the aspects of school bus driving I like most are the drivers' implicit assumption of equality, and the utter lack of competitiveness between them. I've never seen anything like it, anywhere else.

We're a diverse lot. Broadly speaking, we fall into two groups: those who started driving school buses before the lesser depression hit in 2007, and those who came after. The first group is primarily made up of people - mostly women - from blue collar families or the lower rungs of the service sector. By in large, they never went beyond high school, and most of them lived in the county when it was still rural, and both wages and land prices were low. Their number includes both whites and African-Americans.

It's a little more complicated for the newer drivers. Many of us are victims of the recession, mostly middle-aged, who lost our jobs as the economy plunged; this group tends to be college educated, and a lot of us have advanced degrees. Many of us were employed in professional careers; there are a lot of former IT professionals among us and a lot of building contractors, but many other fields are represented too, from graphic design to retail management. Then, too, a lot of the newer drivers are "new wave" immigrants, from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, and both South and Southeast Asia ... and many of them are well educated too, having left behind various professional careers when the emigrated.

There's certainly a rich mixture of accents over our radio!

What's more interesting, and profoundly satisfying, is that I've never - never - seem or heard anything to suggest that any one of us harbors any dislike or distrust or any other evidence of group-related, ethnic, national or racial bias against anybody else. Clearly, we see ourselves as a community of equals, involved in and dedicated - yes, truly dedicated - to the same goal.

That respect for each other leads directly to our cooperative approach to our work. During those times when we're sitting idle, waiting for the students to be released to our buses, we gather together just as bus drivers, chatting about the usual inanities of life or discussing work-related issues. We live the same lives, at least at work, doing the same job, facing the same problems, employed in an experience more completely shared than I've seen in any other working environment. When one of us encounters a problem - say, a traffic obstruction, or a mechanical problem, or an sudden illness, or any other personal or work-related problem - we all pitch in ... and we do it not for money or some other tangible reward, but just to help out.

I should add that the lack of bias spills over to our attitude about the kids we carry: they, too, are a diverse lot, but although I've head many a driver complain about poor student behavior, I've never heard any such complaint tinged with a whiff of bigotry.

I'm finding that school bus drivers are a great community of people, and I'm proud to be among them. And happy, too.

Not your hospital room

Today's New York Times has a story about hospitals catering to the ultra-rich which is definitely worth reading, for it raises some very disturbing questions beyond the simple arrogance of the 99.9% and their contempt and disdain for the rest of us.

The article describes how many hospitals have established special wings for the very wealthy with butlers, gourmet menus ("mushroom risotto with heirloom tomatoes", or maybe lobster tails) prepared by dedicated chefs, plush furniture (antique mahogany to contemporary sleek, with polished marble in the bath), sophisticated entertainment systems, fancy linens ... and direct access to the best physicians.

Yet these are the hospitals which also serve the poor, and the ordinary schmucks who think they're "covered" by health insurance. These are the same hospitals where regular patients, the article reports, can be stuck in the emergency room for three days, or lie in pain on a gurney for two days without even a bed pan.

It isn't the elitism or even the financial cost of this that is most bothersome, but the opportunity costs. To the extent that hospitals pamper the ultra-rich, they are de-emphasizing their care for the rest of us, whether they admit it or not. Resources which could and should be going to improve the care for the entire patient load are being siphoned off to pamper the very wealthy, and preserve their "splendid isolation" from the "common people."

Two lines in this story really stand out: New York-Presbyterian statement that it "is dedicated to providing a single standard of high quality care to all of our patients” when they obviously aren't (haven't we long known that the patient's state of mind matters a lot?), and the one ultra-rich patient's comments that she feels “perfectly at home here — totally private, totally catered,” with “a primary-care physician who also acts as ringmaster for all [her] other doctors," so she sees "no people in training — only the best of the best.” The converse is perfectly true: everybody else gets a lesser level of care.

Is it any wonder that 99% of us are finally starting to resist the tenth of one percent?

To have been on the mountaintop

In the hope we never forget why we have a holiday tomorrow, nor why it matters today, tomorrow, and forever ....

In memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., and more important, his work, I offer these links to his final speech, the one popularly known as his "Mountaintop Speech." He gave it the night before his assassination, speaking in support of striking sanitation workers of Memphis, Tennessee. It is memorable for it captures well his views on non-violence; on the importance of economic freedom, economic injustice and economic rights; and on history and his role in it. The speech is also known for his prophetic view of his own mortality, so cruelly realized the next day.

The text of the speech, from (quite fittingly) the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, AFSCME: “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A video of the speech, from the series Great Speeches, volume 6th, published by the Educational Video Group, and to be viewed for educational purposes only: Martin Luther King, Jr: "Mountaintop" speech full length.

DWT

Waiting for a left turn signal, heading north waiting to turn west. Signal turns; I've got the green arrow. Same for the line of cars headed in the opposite direction.

Car southbound jumps forward as I begin my turn; my guess is that the driver saw the cars to his immediate left starting up so he hit the gas too. Problem, of course, is that he still had the red, and my big yellow box was starting to turn across his bow.

I hit the brakes hard. Also hit the horn hard. The guy stops, fully in the intersection. I look at him, but he's not looking at me or around at the rest of the traffic. No, his attention immediately returns to the electronic device cradled in his lap. Texting.

Personally, I'd rather he'd been drinking a beer. Then at least other drinkers might think, "There but for the grace of God ...." But I doubt that many cell phone users would see the connection, even if the safety stats are alarmingly similar.

Brrrrr

I like school bus driving. I really do. Okay, the pay is lousy, but I like the job.

But there is one aspect of it I hadn't foreseen, and which at times makes that old office job seem awfully inviting: cold.

Cold, as in 14 degrees Fahrenheit.*

Which is what it was the other morning, when I arrived to prepare my bus for the day's schedule. Of course, that was before dawn, but dawn didn't bring much help; the thermometer reached only to 28 by the afternoon.

Worse, the heater in my bus is anemic. Running full blast, it didn't raise the inside temperature enough to make me think I could remove my gloves until the final run of the day, and it didn't feel even vaguely comfortable until I had dropped off my last kid for the day. And no, I never removed my parka. I was chilly all day. Very chilly.

I know, it could be worse. I could be our roving mechanic, working all day outside (and often under buses trying to thaw out frozen brake lines, or swinging a wrench to replace a frozen stop sign actuator). Or have any one of a number of other jobs that require one to be outdoors all day in all types of weather.

On the other hand, I could be in an office, where cold days mean 72 F (and hot, 78). Has a nice sound to it, y'know? Granted, back then I worked for a malevolent tyrant whose only saving grace was blinding incompetence. But I never came home chilled to the bone ....


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* Yes, I could say -10 Celsius, and Celsius really does makes a lot more sense. But using a positive number makes it sound warmer, or at least not quite so cold. And 28 definitely sounds better than minus two. The time to go metric is the summer, when 40 Celsius sounds so much better than 104.