Hello concerned PennDOT managers,
*
Thank you for providing this format for expressing our important road safety concerns.
*
I have been living in Central Pennsylvania for two years now, after relocating here from Idaho. Out there, I worked driving large trucks for twenty years, plus focused on aircraft safety at Horizon Air for six. In addition, I’ve worked as a newspaper opinion contributor, sometimes writing with a strong emphasis on highway safety issues.
*
As a disabled person, I’ve been working at Skills of Central Pennsylvania (Benner Pike) since early 2018, and am grateful for this type of productive work. From my house, I catch the bus to and from Skills most days and have made several noteworthy observations along the way.
*
A majority of my fellow bus passengers are also disabled and some don’t have much of a voice. I have sometimes noted safety concerns that fellow work colleagues seldom address (or maybe don’t notice), so I try to speak up for them and their equal rights for harmless environments.
A top concern is this:
*
One spring afternoon in 2018, while riding aboard a fully loaded Centre County Transportation passenger bus, the driver hit a long Penns Valley straightaway and then sped up. Soon she was exceeding 80 mph in a posted 55 zone, and continued this fast rate steadily over our next 5 to 6 miles. Since I could see her speedometer clearly from my front seat vantage point I considered zooming in to take a few snapshots, but then decided not to.
*
A few months later at my Skills product assembly job they trained me for a new task of assembling “Mobile Logic Units” for bus fleets. Asking our drivers about some of the inner workings of these, I learned that these recorders transpose and save tremendous amounts of data. In places where motorists exceed speed limits, the variegated maps are programmed to mark these and indicate them with red warning flags.
*
I’m curious though if bus managers actually address these instances of bending speed laws, because by many standards motoring 25 mph over the limit is consider reckless driving – and with a bus full of voiceless disabled people to boot!
*
My intuition niggles at me rigorously that perhaps they do not. And if PennDOT has authority to conduct audits of bus information like this, I believe this is something you should consider investigating deeper, if you do not already do so. After all, why did our bus services invest in these expensive cutting-edge safety features if management ignores them?
*
To me endangering already disabled passengers sounds like an uppermost consideration to be avoided at all costs.
Thank you,
JB
*
Thank you for providing this format for expressing our important road safety concerns.
*
I have been living in Central Pennsylvania for two years now, after relocating here from Idaho. Out there, I worked driving large trucks for twenty years, plus focused on aircraft safety at Horizon Air for six. In addition, I’ve worked as a newspaper opinion contributor, sometimes writing with a strong emphasis on highway safety issues.
*
As a disabled person, I’ve been working at Skills of Central Pennsylvania (Benner Pike) since early 2018, and am grateful for this type of productive work. From my house, I catch the bus to and from Skills most days and have made several noteworthy observations along the way.
*
A majority of my fellow bus passengers are also disabled and some don’t have much of a voice. I have sometimes noted safety concerns that fellow work colleagues seldom address (or maybe don’t notice), so I try to speak up for them and their equal rights for harmless environments.
A top concern is this:
*
One spring afternoon in 2018, while riding aboard a fully loaded Centre County Transportation passenger bus, the driver hit a long Penns Valley straightaway and then sped up. Soon she was exceeding 80 mph in a posted 55 zone, and continued this fast rate steadily over our next 5 to 6 miles. Since I could see her speedometer clearly from my front seat vantage point I considered zooming in to take a few snapshots, but then decided not to.
*
A few months later at my Skills product assembly job they trained me for a new task of assembling “Mobile Logic Units” for bus fleets. Asking our drivers about some of the inner workings of these, I learned that these recorders transpose and save tremendous amounts of data. In places where motorists exceed speed limits, the variegated maps are programmed to mark these and indicate them with red warning flags.
*
I’m curious though if bus managers actually address these instances of bending speed laws, because by many standards motoring 25 mph over the limit is consider reckless driving – and with a bus full of voiceless disabled people to boot!
*
My intuition niggles at me rigorously that perhaps they do not. And if PennDOT has authority to conduct audits of bus information like this, I believe this is something you should consider investigating deeper, if you do not already do so. After all, why did our bus services invest in these expensive cutting-edge safety features if management ignores them?
*
To me endangering already disabled passengers sounds like an uppermost consideration to be avoided at all costs.
Thank you,
JB
Comments