Once Again, I Predict Doom
A pedestrian has been hit by a bus. And killed.
Five years ago, there was a similar accident in Portland, Oregon, though that one was far more deadly. That crash served as a wake-up call to transit operations everywhere. As a direct result of that crash, for example, we drivers in King County had a mandatory "pedestrian awareness" training class concerning the most likely causes of crashes and how to avoid them. I remember that class very well. The instructor told us that we should always be tired after work. Why? If we aren't tired, we weren't paying enough attention.
There is logic in that. Awareness serves as a drain on energy. It is your brain eating into the food supply your body provides. There is also, as research has shown, a limited number of brain activities called "executive functions" available for every person between rounds of sleep. The more you are asked to make decisions, the more you are to default to "non-executive" decisions later, in essence falling back on heuristic habits to get through the rest of the day. It's why we tend to crave sweet, fatty and salty foods after a hard day thinking. It's why we crave vegetative entertainments after too many decisions are made.
So this training class was an attempt to warn drivers that their jobs are dangerous and that lives are at stake. Fair enough.
Here's a question, though: what actions could those in charge of drivers taken to reduce the threat of deadly accidents of all types? There are, in essence, two.
1. Acquire safer equipment.
And by "safer," I here mean "easier to drive safely." You see, when something is easier to operate, the operator has to use less of his or her executive function to operate the equipment. Here's a salient example: visibility.
On buses, there is in the forward left corner a support. It holds the roof up and the windshield and side window. In too many buses, it is thick. That is, it serves as a substantial obstruction to the drivers' ability to look to the left and ahead of the coach and determine if making a left turn is possible or even advisable. It is called "the A-pillar". When combined with the rear-view mirrors, the A-pillar can substantially block a drivers' view during a left turn.
Don't take my word for it. After the Portland accident-and, thinking back, after my mandatory retraining for pedestrian awareness-the bus manufacturer, New Flyer, shared a portion of the settlement with the bus operator, TriMet. This means that the design of the bus, specifically of A-pillar and the position of the installed mirrors, had as much to do with the death of those two pedestrians as the action of the driver.
While researching this, I stumbled upon a marvelous visual representation of that very accident. First, they make a video using the bus' exterior camera and eyewitness accounts. That cluster of colored dots represent the pedestrians.
Then, they note what the driver might have seen from the driver's seat:
The two main obstacles to visibility.
Finally, another series of stills incorporates the blind spots with the action. Here's just one of those stills:
(Since they use a series of stills animated through code on their site instead of an animated gif, I cannot reproduce the complete picture here. Go to the site for the full effect.)
This accident is likely (based on what I heard about the accident from other drivers and my own familiarity with the accident site) similar to the Northgate accident here in Seattle. There are a few differences:
Yes, you got that right. Seattle obtained new buses with more left-hand visibility obstruction.
Why?
Before I get into equipment issues, there is another way management agencies can improve public safety.
2. Improve scheduled operations.
Here, "improve" should be interpreted as "make sure the scheduled time for a route is possible during that time" and "ensure adequate recovery between runs."
We drivers are constantly sharing run cards-the official schedule we are supposed to drive, complete with routing and time points, the times at which we should be at given locations-that are completely at odds with the reality on the road. "Five minutes to get there? Then?!?" That kind of thing. The fact is, those expectations demanded of the driver by the schedule are one of the main points of contention between drivers and management.
Think about it for just a moment and you can see why. The drivers are paid by the minute. By the hour, really; but our daily work is broken down by the minute, so we are paid per minute. If management can get a driver moving more during his or her shift, management gets "more bang for the buck," more service per minute of paid labor.
Of course, management is the first to hear complaints about late runs, missed connections because of late runs, that kind of thing. They take this fairly seriously because, of course, mainstream media can latch onto chronic lateness in runs and make a story of it, embarrassing the managers or even exposing something more than just embarrassing.
The best way to run a bus well is to have both a bit of leeway in the schedule itself and adequate time between scheduled runs, called recovery time. Recovery is often misnamed "break" time for drivers, since that is when we usually use the facilities and grab a bite to eat.
For that reason, in 2010 Metro tightened its recovery times as per a directive from the King County Council. What happened? An 800 percent increase in all accidents.
Think about it. You are now a driver. You are late, simply because the traffic lights turned to red when you happened to be there, or because you carried a lot of people, or [reasons]. Because you are late, your recovery is now gone.
So you hurry up.
And when you hurry up, turns are made faster. You get closer to other cars on the road ("diminishing following distance" in the parlance of drivers). You accelerate more aggressively (a major cause of people falling in the bus itself).
All because you, you selfish bastard, wish to use the toilet and not wet yourself.
The evidence is clear:
Both the state Department of Transportation statistics and Metro’s own figures show that collisions with pedestrians grew substantially after schedules were tightened and drivers had less time to recover. Metro presented figures to Crosscut that indicated a 35 percent jump in bus collisions with walkers in the past four-plus years, from 94 to 127. WSDOT figures, based on calls significant enough to bring an immediate police response, show Metro bus versus pedestrian collisions rose from six in a four year-plus period before the schedule change to 20 over the same time after the speed-up. And eight of those accidents proved to be nearly identical - a bus turning left hitting a pedestrian in a crosswalk.
(I emboldened.)
Metro's response (other than to get buses with greater visibility restrictions)? Denial. From the same link above: "In an interview, Metro officials denied that any cause-and-effect relationship can be drawn between pedestrian accidents and the schedule changes or the new bus model."
Mendacity. Purely mendacious denial.
This is, sadly, fitting, given management's track record of late.
With all of this sad silliness, what will I do?
I will do all that I can to drive safely. Just the other day, I decided I will no longer enable bad decisions by playing along with the system. For example, if we are late getting back to the base, we must fill out a form and list the reason. If it's a traffic delay, we list the location. If it's due to weather, we list that. This gives management a pretty good idea of what is going wrong and where.
I now have a run with a bad schedule. Without delays in traffic, without obvious slow downs elsewhere, at least once a week I am late, that is, I arrive at the same time that I should start the next trip. I've decided to take my break, if it means running to the only restroom available, even if it means waiting until other drivers have finished their business there. (Seriously, who decided only one toilet could adequately service the terminal for 9 routes?!?) I will leave after I am scheduled, without apology. I will then fill out my overtime under the "Bad Schedule" code, and list "inadequate recovery" as the specific reason. Why? Because that is what's happening. Why lie? Furthermore, I will implore my fellow drivers to do the same.
My deliberate slowness might impact the schedule. I know that. But think about when you get things fixed. You get things fixed after they have broken. If the schedule ain't broken, it will never be fixed.
And as I make dreadfully slow left turns, rocking and rolling in my seat to overcome the increasingly thick A-pillar to my left, and therefore get even later, why then many of you out there can thank me.
If you happen to ever be pedestrians.
Five years ago, there was a similar accident in Portland, Oregon, though that one was far more deadly. That crash served as a wake-up call to transit operations everywhere. As a direct result of that crash, for example, we drivers in King County had a mandatory "pedestrian awareness" training class concerning the most likely causes of crashes and how to avoid them. I remember that class very well. The instructor told us that we should always be tired after work. Why? If we aren't tired, we weren't paying enough attention.
There is logic in that. Awareness serves as a drain on energy. It is your brain eating into the food supply your body provides. There is also, as research has shown, a limited number of brain activities called "executive functions" available for every person between rounds of sleep. The more you are asked to make decisions, the more you are to default to "non-executive" decisions later, in essence falling back on heuristic habits to get through the rest of the day. It's why we tend to crave sweet, fatty and salty foods after a hard day thinking. It's why we crave vegetative entertainments after too many decisions are made.
So this training class was an attempt to warn drivers that their jobs are dangerous and that lives are at stake. Fair enough.
Here's a question, though: what actions could those in charge of drivers taken to reduce the threat of deadly accidents of all types? There are, in essence, two.
1. Acquire safer equipment.
And by "safer," I here mean "easier to drive safely." You see, when something is easier to operate, the operator has to use less of his or her executive function to operate the equipment. Here's a salient example: visibility.
On buses, there is in the forward left corner a support. It holds the roof up and the windshield and side window. In too many buses, it is thick. That is, it serves as a substantial obstruction to the drivers' ability to look to the left and ahead of the coach and determine if making a left turn is possible or even advisable. It is called "the A-pillar". When combined with the rear-view mirrors, the A-pillar can substantially block a drivers' view during a left turn.
Don't take my word for it. After the Portland accident-and, thinking back, after my mandatory retraining for pedestrian awareness-the bus manufacturer, New Flyer, shared a portion of the settlement with the bus operator, TriMet. This means that the design of the bus, specifically of A-pillar and the position of the installed mirrors, had as much to do with the death of those two pedestrians as the action of the driver.
While researching this, I stumbled upon a marvelous visual representation of that very accident. First, they make a video using the bus' exterior camera and eyewitness accounts. That cluster of colored dots represent the pedestrians.
Click to viewThen, they note what the driver might have seen from the driver's seat:
The two main obstacles to visibility.
Finally, another series of stills incorporates the blind spots with the action. Here's just one of those stills:
(Since they use a series of stills animated through code on their site instead of an animated gif, I cannot reproduce the complete picture here. Go to the site for the full effect.)
This accident is likely (based on what I heard about the accident from other drivers and my own familiarity with the accident site) similar to the Northgate accident here in Seattle. There are a few differences:
- The Portland accident happened at night; the Seattle accident during the day; and
- The New Flyer A-pillars were thinner and therefore less obstructive than the Orion's A-pillar driven in Seattle.
Yes, you got that right. Seattle obtained new buses with more left-hand visibility obstruction.
Why?
Before I get into equipment issues, there is another way management agencies can improve public safety.
2. Improve scheduled operations.
Here, "improve" should be interpreted as "make sure the scheduled time for a route is possible during that time" and "ensure adequate recovery between runs."
We drivers are constantly sharing run cards-the official schedule we are supposed to drive, complete with routing and time points, the times at which we should be at given locations-that are completely at odds with the reality on the road. "Five minutes to get there? Then?!?" That kind of thing. The fact is, those expectations demanded of the driver by the schedule are one of the main points of contention between drivers and management.
Think about it for just a moment and you can see why. The drivers are paid by the minute. By the hour, really; but our daily work is broken down by the minute, so we are paid per minute. If management can get a driver moving more during his or her shift, management gets "more bang for the buck," more service per minute of paid labor.
Of course, management is the first to hear complaints about late runs, missed connections because of late runs, that kind of thing. They take this fairly seriously because, of course, mainstream media can latch onto chronic lateness in runs and make a story of it, embarrassing the managers or even exposing something more than just embarrassing.
The best way to run a bus well is to have both a bit of leeway in the schedule itself and adequate time between scheduled runs, called recovery time. Recovery is often misnamed "break" time for drivers, since that is when we usually use the facilities and grab a bite to eat.
For that reason, in 2010 Metro tightened its recovery times as per a directive from the King County Council. What happened? An 800 percent increase in all accidents.
Think about it. You are now a driver. You are late, simply because the traffic lights turned to red when you happened to be there, or because you carried a lot of people, or [reasons]. Because you are late, your recovery is now gone.
So you hurry up.
And when you hurry up, turns are made faster. You get closer to other cars on the road ("diminishing following distance" in the parlance of drivers). You accelerate more aggressively (a major cause of people falling in the bus itself).
All because you, you selfish bastard, wish to use the toilet and not wet yourself.
The evidence is clear:
Both the state Department of Transportation statistics and Metro’s own figures show that collisions with pedestrians grew substantially after schedules were tightened and drivers had less time to recover. Metro presented figures to Crosscut that indicated a 35 percent jump in bus collisions with walkers in the past four-plus years, from 94 to 127. WSDOT figures, based on calls significant enough to bring an immediate police response, show Metro bus versus pedestrian collisions rose from six in a four year-plus period before the schedule change to 20 over the same time after the speed-up. And eight of those accidents proved to be nearly identical - a bus turning left hitting a pedestrian in a crosswalk.
(I emboldened.)
Metro's response (other than to get buses with greater visibility restrictions)? Denial. From the same link above: "In an interview, Metro officials denied that any cause-and-effect relationship can be drawn between pedestrian accidents and the schedule changes or the new bus model."
Mendacity. Purely mendacious denial.
This is, sadly, fitting, given management's track record of late.
With all of this sad silliness, what will I do?
I will do all that I can to drive safely. Just the other day, I decided I will no longer enable bad decisions by playing along with the system. For example, if we are late getting back to the base, we must fill out a form and list the reason. If it's a traffic delay, we list the location. If it's due to weather, we list that. This gives management a pretty good idea of what is going wrong and where.
I now have a run with a bad schedule. Without delays in traffic, without obvious slow downs elsewhere, at least once a week I am late, that is, I arrive at the same time that I should start the next trip. I've decided to take my break, if it means running to the only restroom available, even if it means waiting until other drivers have finished their business there. (Seriously, who decided only one toilet could adequately service the terminal for 9 routes?!?) I will leave after I am scheduled, without apology. I will then fill out my overtime under the "Bad Schedule" code, and list "inadequate recovery" as the specific reason. Why? Because that is what's happening. Why lie? Furthermore, I will implore my fellow drivers to do the same.
My deliberate slowness might impact the schedule. I know that. But think about when you get things fixed. You get things fixed after they have broken. If the schedule ain't broken, it will never be fixed.
And as I make dreadfully slow left turns, rocking and rolling in my seat to overcome the increasingly thick A-pillar to my left, and therefore get even later, why then many of you out there can thank me.
If you happen to ever be pedestrians.