Trimess

Saturday, April 13, 2013

This bus driver really loses his cool




StarTran bus driver fired, accused of assaulting rider : Journal Star Crime and Courts

This bus driver really loses it from al m on Vimeo.

LONG CLIP OF THE EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE BEATING!

6 comments:

always roaming said...

This driver should be charged with a felony. After all, if a passenger assaults a driver, in most states, it's a felony.

Before watching the clip, I figured that the passenger was being extremely unruly or being an asshole. Or even that the passenger may have in some way taunted or threatened the driver verbally. However, from what we can see in the clip, the passenger was in no way being hostile. Perhaps he was annoying to the driver by asking too many questions --most transit operators know how irritating that can be sometimes as I've come close to lashing out verbally in such circumstances-- but in no way did the passenger deserve that kind of treatment. There was not a single stitch of justification on the driver's part to behave in that manner.

He deserved to be fired and his ATU Local should not spend a penny trying to defend this guy.

Nedwell said...

The Lincoln Journal Star online has an article on this incident. The driver asked on the bus radio if his supervisor could erase the bus camera footage.

Hard to tell from the news article why the red mist descended for this driver. His punching of the unresisting passenger goes on for a while.

Unknown said...

WTF!!! How can an op, in his stupid mind, think a rider that's new to the system and riding for the first time, deserve a 17min ride from Hell. NO ONE, that asks simple questions needs the behind beaten in ANY manner! The worst part was him calling a sup, while the guy sat there and said nothing, for about 8 or 9 minutes, sounds like he was getting prepared to get physical. Probably, did it before and got away with it, with a sups help.
HB

always roaming said...

Strange, take a look at this longer video clip that shows the interaction between the two before the assault takes place. It almost seems that they are having a "normal" verbal exchange in the manner that most of us who have been transit operators will have with passengers. They even seem to be joking around with each other with the rider clearly laughing and smiling several times. Then there appears long periods of time where the rider is just silent and sitting there as any other passenger would when riding the bus.

Even when the driver physically approaches him, the rider is respectful to the point of addressing the operator by using "sir" when apologizing.

What went wrong here to piss the operator off to the point where he loses it the way he does? I can't help but believe there may be a racial component involved as many on other message boards are stating. How can somebody be so angry like that at a person who doesn't really seem to deserve it?

Again, to me, this passenger was surprisingly well behaved during the entire clip. I've had passengers on my bus who would be so much more deserving of being kicked off the bus in that manner than this poor guy. He nowhere near deserved what happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4PbuRXj058

This longer clip also captures the incident from two cameras.

Al M said...

The bus driver just cracked, we've seen it before.

One little event created a 'mental breakdown' and the operator just lost it.

No other explanation.

Cameron Johnson said...

He 'just' cracked? Someone beats a driver up over nothing, he's a bastard, but a driver beats an innocent person nearly to death and he 'just' cracked? Certainly. He just cracked several bones, a sense of safety and probably some emotional balance while he was at it. Beating the shit out of someone is a level plane as far as I'm concerned. Either both the drivers or riders 'cracked' or they're both just awful people.