Archives for Articles about Safety Compromises

In Part 1 of this series, I introduced the notion that roughly half of all public transportation-related incidents are the result of a deliberate trade-off of passenger safety for some system or owner’s benefit. The most common benefit is the service provider’s operating a schedule that is too tight. Multiple Moments, Multiple Risks A passenger falling down on his or her way to a seat or stanchion as the bus or coach pulls away from the stop does not usually produce results as ugly as when a wheelchair tips over.  Nor does a single passenger not given the time to

This new National Bus Trader piece is the first installment of likely a year-long series about types of incidents that result from trade-offs of safety for other benefits — adherence to unrealistically-tight schedules (or drivers running behind schedule) being the principal culprit. Frankly, of the more than 600 public transportation-related lawsuits in which I have served as an expert witness, roughly half of all incidents see to be the result of some deliberate safety compromise. Because the characteristics, operating environments, duty cycles and dynamics of every public transportation mode differ, it follows that each mode contains different safety compromises. But

Question: What do ostriches and fixed route bus operations have in common? Answer: They both avoid reality by burying their heads in the sand. The Ostrich’s approach has long been well-known. Given its practice, and the vast number of animal species that have failed to avoid extinction, the Ostriches’ continued existence is a marvel, explainable partly by the paucity of bad-tasting meat their carcasses provide, and partly by their being the second-fastest-running animal on the planet, next to the cheetah. Believe it or not, an Ostrich, which cannot fly, can run 62 mph! Unlike Ostriches, buses can fly, at least