BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Well, the bus driver who hit me last July as I cycled home from work in Squirrel Hill was very nice. Tried to get me to sign a waiver as I dragged my bike to the sidewalk and ended up just kinda leaving me there all cut up. Lovely. Oh, and his little parting gift? $20,000 in medical bills (I was at the hospital for about three hours - thank goodness I didn't stay overnight!). By the way, if anyone saw that (there was a cyclist there who kindly stopped and gave me a pencil and paper to get the driver's details) please give me a shout, because if Medicaid won't cover my bill I have no choice but to sue Port Authority. They deny everything, naturally. It was at the intersection of Murray and Wilkins... Joy!

Damn cm1. $20k? That just isn't right.

Bus drivers are professional drivers and are now paid in part by the drink tax. They need to be held to a higher standard. They should be a shining example of how to drive a vehicle in Pittsburgh not a threat to our lives.

I make every effort to avoid PAT busses now. They done taught me good.

That sucks... Hindsight always sucks but let that be a lesson to anyone who has an incident with a bus... Call the police to have them come on-scene even if you don't think you are hurt and make sure you have the bus ID number and any other information you can get your hands on, because the more time that passes the less chance of getting any kind of settlement from them.

I've seen way too much crazy shit on the bus that I would rather walk uphill 6 miles in a blizzard than ride the bus ever again.

I would go so far to say that most of the bus drivers are OK, but sometimes they just SNAP and go postal... I can totally understand why -- I would not last ONE MONTH as a bus driver without getting fired for either beating the shit out of someone on the bus, or running someone over... But I know that much about myself and would never apply for the job LOL.

Nowdays they not only have to deal with the daily freak show and parade of drunks and who knows what else on the bus, but they all have satellite tracking chips on their busses now and get screamed at by the dispatcher for being late to stops and not being on schedule, even if it is a result of traffic jams and something that is not their fault. Combined with the fact that there are just as many non-bus driving dipshits on the road with them (and how much road rage I have just driving my Jeep around town) it takes a special kind of cool to be able to put up with all of that craziness.

Not an excuse whatsoever to run a cyclist off the road, hit pedestrians out of anger, drive up on the sidewalk to get around traffic because you're pissed (was on a bus where the driver did that back in 95 or so)...

They should put the drivers through a rigorous stress test of some sort before they give them the job to see how they will handle all of it. Most of the drivers I have seen do crazy shit are totally wigged out and are just "going postal" substituting a 20 ton bus for a machine gun.