Thanks for your response concerning my questions for the safety
committee (5/17/12). You said if I had
any questions, to contact you. I have
some follow up questions concerning the committee’s response, of blaming operators
for “all” slips, trips and falls. In your
response you said, “Slips, trips and
falls do sometimes occur while the bus is moving, but the operator can reduce
the risk. Smooth braking and acceleration are essential and the need to brake
suddenly can almost always be avoided through the use of proper scanning
skills.” With this said, the committee
never considered any other factors, that may cause slips, trips and falls, for
example: equipment related, all buses
are not new or not all 2900 series. Most
of the buses are in bad repair, meaning the breaking systems are in bad repair
or the accelerator is in bad repair, which may be more of a contributing factor
in all slips, trips and falls. If trainers
and operators alike know this, then why does the committee not? 1400-2200 series buses are all outdated,
meaning that they are will over the federal standard of 500,000 miles or 12
years, which means, they are more prone to glitches when it comes to stopping or
accelerating. The second part of your comment
concerned “scanning”. in a nut-shell, the operator who has to scan
every 5-8 seconds in the mirrors, accelerate and brake, concentrate on danger
from “all” sides, verbal announcements, pulling into stops while not taking off
mirrors, not hitting pedestrians who will do the dandiest things, not run over
the bicyclists, etc. All this while
little frail grandma, wants to get to the door quickly, while not grabbing a
bar/strap or anything stable. This “is”
a recipe for disaster. This “is” clearly
a safety hazard. A vast majority of our
ridership is “honored citizens”, meaning most of them have no choice but to
ride the bus/trains, with either physical or mental challenges. We need something to assist us in solving
this problem, as one of my suggestions, signage. There are signs all over that we can point
to, to reinforce a preventative measure of safety (since there are no policy’s
for in-service safety for passengers), which Trimet aspires for. There are signs for; fairs, rules of the
ride, stand behind the yellow line or go with the flow. All of which creates a balance of safety.
For far too long Trimet has created a safety hazard of
riders getting up and wondering around while the bus/train is moving, the time
is now, we need to create, in-service safety.
-----------------
In this challenge, something
was brought to my attention, vinyl seating. The vinyl seating is going
to be Trimets big change concerning cleanliness in the coming years, but
has anyone actually sat on the seats? If you have not I suggest that
you do. The reason for this is that I have heard stories of these
things being slippery, thus possibly causing more falls on the bus. So
just be aware if you have one of the buses that have the vinyl seats to
be careful, that applying the brakes hard may result in someone sliding
off the seats. Once I get a response from Mrs. Gilbreath, on the below
information I will include this in a rebut of the so-called safety
committee challenge.
3 comments:
Vinyl seats? Have you seen the plastic seats, like the very one I'm sitting on right now on 1450? They are super slick.... They might be nice from an anti-vandalism and a ease-of-cleaning standpoint, but what about safety?
They don't clean anything at all, they haven't cleaned anything since the begining of last year, when they relocated all but 1 cleaner. Imagine how filthy things have been for operators. Health risk....anyone.
As some of you may know, KC Metro here has went to the same seats TriMet has been using since the 2600s. When they started using these seats, they went straight to vinyl, however ours has a slip-resistent surface to it, its actually hard to slide and slouch in ours. But hey, that what happens when a transit agency is willing to spend money for buses. Our next order of 67 artic buses or so is almost all here, and about 50% are in service with these new seats. I think it was the fleet that arrived about 3-4 years ago they started using slip-resistant seats, even on the more "fancier" seats. Sound Transit still uses cloth, seeing some of the first ST hybrids we received back in 2004, man those seats are dirty, theres a point where cleaning doesnt bring up all the wear stains.
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