Full Time Risk Management

What would you think, faced with a life-threatening illness requiring a specialist to repair an intricate problem in your body, if an intern showed up for the 13-hour procedure?

"It's okay," he tells you, "I've watched Dr. Smith do this procedure a few times. He wrote a few notes on what to look out for, so I should be fine. Don't worry... I've got this."

You'd be a bit apprehensive, I'll bet. How about letting a student pilot behind the controls of your red-eye flight to New York? What if the plumber sent his six-year-old son to fix your sink at double the price?

Now imagine boarding a bus. Your driver just graduated from training three weeks prior. He's had very little experience on his own, yet all of a sudden he's putting in 10-hour days just as the regular guy does. He hasn't learned how to maneuver the bus between two parked cars and align the bus parallel to the curb so the ADA ramp can be deployed. Nor has he had enough time to dissect traffic patterns, stoplight sequences, or passenger behavior. Instead of predicting the Washington driver's penchant for passing a bus at 15mph over the speed limit, then braking and turning right in front of his bus. His braking technique is still in practice, and passengers don't usually stand until the bus has completely stopped.

It took me most of a year before I felt qualified to be a full-time operator. Training shows us how to operate a bus, but time teaches us much more. Driving a bus in-service is an awesome responsibility that shouldn't be taken lightly. Yet our transit agency's management has recently shed decades of advancement in training and safe practice by promoting operators with less than a month experience to full-time status. Some of them had hardly finished line training when they were promoted. Veterans with decades of service consider me a "noob" even though I am working on my sixth year! I didn't consider myself competent until halfway through my second year on the Extra Board. Driving different routes each day in every corner of the metro area was an invaluable education. However, I wasn't ready to study until I had been part time for almost a year.

Smooth and safe operation takes hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles to perfect. Considering a part-time bus operator drives maybe 50-75 miles a day, his first year finds him rolling about 65,000 in a year. That's just about enough experience for someone to take on the rigors of full-time operation, in which an operator usually drives 100,000-plus. Putting a newbie in the seat for this long so soon is not only reckless, it's dangerous to the employee and the public.

Experience is value, especially where safety is concerned, but I'm wondering if they understand what the concept truly means. They give it lip service, but it has been relegated to third place behind schedule and something they call "customer service." (They're passengers folks, not customers. Just like those who use air travel, trains or cruise ships, we convey passengers who must obey the rules of transit.)

Unfortunately, our authority as "Captain of the Ship" has been eroded by management. It seems more concerned with the slanted opinion of an uneducated transit public than supporting its front line workers. We're battle-weary from being assaulted or menaced over 50 times this year already, and feel management is more concerned with our inability to perform as robots when physically threatened. Basic human biology doesn't seem an acceptable excuse for self-defense. It's disconcerting, disheartening, and disingenuous. But it's the new norm in transit. We attempt to adapt, but many are giving up and just doing our job as we've been trained to, and how experience has taught us. We know our jobs, but they do not. Still, they keep trying to tell us how to do ours, yet we're not given much input on how they do theirs.

Many new operators who have become full-time too early have lost their jobs due to the insane time-loss rules or because they racked up more than two Preventable Accidents. When you consider the tens of thousands of dollars spent on each trainee, the district exhibits wanton disregard for their safety and is playing loose with transit funding. I wonder if risk management gurus have cautioned against this latest exhibit of sheer folly.

Once again, I'm utterly convinced management personnel should be required to have driven a transit vehicle in-service for a specified amount of time before being qualified to tell us how to do our jobs. I firmly believe many of them wouldn't make it out of training. Some would run screaming from the yard crying for their mommy. It's not an easy job, nor for the faint of heart. It's physically grueling, psychologically challenging, and soul wrenching. We take great pride in the years we've spent perfecting driving techniques, predicting and avoiding danger, and learning the verbal judo necessary to maintain a peaceful atmosphere for those we transport.

You'd think transit management would work overtime to ensure we return to the days when transit workers felt part of a family rather than the opposition. It should take the time and reserve the resources necessary to foster a healthy work environment. Instead, we feel trodden upon and disrespected. Passenger complaints seem to garner more attention than operator concerns.

Now I know what my brother operator meant when he told me early in my career: "This is the best job I've ever had, but the worst company I've ever worked for."

Sure, the noobs don't make a lot of money, and bills need to be paid. We've all been there. But it takes a long time in the seat to develop safe driving habits. As the airlines won't allow teenagers in the cockpit, nor should we promote people with less than a month of experience to operate a bus full time. As President George Bush #1 said, "Wouldn't be prudent."

I'm constantly shaking my head, as are my brothers and sisters. We're still hoping for common sense to rule the day, but so far the madness deepens. It makes me pull out a thought that angrily insists I hold within yet must be brought out into the light: Must one of us die before someone takes overall safety seriously? I'd hate to think they believe the cost is worth the risk. God, I hope and pray not.

Safe travels, and safety first my dear brothers and sisters.