School Transportation News Magazine | September 2009


[Analysis] Blocking the Windshield,


Compromising the View With all the technology available to both vehicles


By Ned Einstein


and drivers, one would think that bus drivers could see and react to large objects appearing directly in front of their windshields. But, as many jurors learn, one would be wrong to think this.


HANDICAPPING VISIBILITY Some of the simplest things can ruin or limit one’s


vision through the windshield: • A motorcoach driver babysitting his pre-school


son during his morning shift stored a box of dry ce- real on the left corner of the dashboard. Along with the street-side window post and exterior mirror and mounting bracket, the cereal box effectively screened off a significant quadrant of his visibility through the windshield. Turning left onto a four-lane, one-way arterial street, which he had to immediately merge across (in order to then turn right less than a block further), the driver did not notice that he had run over an elderly pedestrian until he felt the proverbial “pop” as the street-side rear tires crushed her skull. • In a similar incident of far less severity, a left-turning


bus driver’s visibility was impeded by his transit agen- cy’s mounting of a “Clever Device” (a passenger count- ing device) next to instead of on the window. During his turn, this alert driver detected a thud on the street side of the bus, glanced immediately at his driver’s-side rear-view mirror and, spotting a pedestrian just for- ward of the street-side rear tires, managed to bring the bus to a complete stop before the tires reached her — although the pedestrian’s sprained foot suggests that she either walked or fell into the bus or, as she claimed, its outside rear tire ran over her foot. Given this driver’s extraordinary reaction time, it is likely that he would have seen the pedestrian through the left-hand side of his windshield before beginning his turn had it not been blocked by the now-widened window post.


FLIES AND STONES Asked to predict the fate of two prisoners, Joseph


was reputed to have told a vintner that he would be freed because the fly found in the King’s wine lay be- yond the vintner’s control. But he predicted death for the baker in whose loaf of bread the King found a stone. In the Land of Equity, the two bus incidents summarized above might have been so judged. Regrettably, the United States litigation environ-


ment lies far from this land. In the lawsuit surround- ing the first incident above, the defendant tendered a meaty, seven-figure settlement that likely meant the


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end of his client’s business and dreams. In the second example, the dangerous obstruction was institution- alized by the transit agency’s negligent policy-making, specification and installation.


DIRTY OR DITSY Examining the vehicles involved in dozens of cross-


ing accidents, I have occasionally found the exterior side of the windshields dirty or dusty outside the area covered by the windshield wipers. Far more com- monly, I have found a band of much thicker dirt lying across the lower edge of the windshield’s interior — a section often harder to reach in cleaning, particularly on some of the newer Type C buses where the lower part of the windshields lie further away from the driv- er. In certain operations, cleaning the windshield’s in- terior “falls through the cracks;” the responsibility for cleaning it may not be clearly defined between driv- ers and maintenance/cleaning personnel, and when drivers have to do the cleaning, they often clean only what they can easily reach. Examining a bus long after an incident, it is some-


times hard to know how much has been “changed” between the incident and the bus inspection. I some- times find the buses spotless. Other times, particu- larly when they have been compounded by police of- ficials, they can be absolutely filthy, inside and out. In the latter case, it is hard to determine what, if any, im- pact the dirty windshield had on the incident. Drivers who run over pedestrians right in front of them never claim they failed to look. Instead, they always claim they looked, but saw nothing.


DICK, JANE AND SALLY No transportation provider can guarantee that its


drivers will both look and see. But unless its attorney encounters a jury packed with individuals grown ac- customed to, and satisfied with, extremely poor vi- sion, the defendant whose driver ran over a pedestrian will pay a steep price for the failure to give its drivers the best chance to do both. Yet, jurors will be equally unmerciful when the provider did so, yet its driver still failed to both look and see. Running someone over with the front of your bus, whether you failed to look or failed to see, amounts to pretty much the same thing in a lawsuit. But you can decrease the odds of such an incident occurring by keeping your buses clean and your drivers healthy, alert and focused. n


Einstein is an expert witness and frequent contribu- tor. He may be contacted at einstein@transalt.com.


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