Blunder buses menace streets
Give us a brake! MTA vehicles’ trail of destruction
They rear-ended school buses, plowed into a church, hit bicyclists and pedestrians and sent riders flying with abrupt stops and turns.
MTA buses racked up at least 21,823 crashes, collisions and other mishaps over 31 months beginning in 2015 — an average of 23 per day, The Post has found.
At least 2,520 people — or 2.7 per day — were injured during the time period, according to the MTA. At least 14 people died, including a 25-year-old skateboarder, a 62-year-old pedestrian, a 60-year-old motorist and a 70year-old with a walker who was mutilated by a hit-and-run bus.
School buses were involved in at least 180 accidents, the data show. In one case, a 9-year-old boy and a 54-year-old woman were taken to the hospital when an MTA bus rear-ended their school bus.
The agency turned over the incident records more than six months after The Post filed a Freedom of Information Law request — and only under threat of legal action.
“These numbers show that something needs to done to make it safer,” said Stephanie BurgosVeras, a senior organizer for the Riders Alliance, a grass-roots group that advocates for subway and bus customers.
The group’s Bus Turnaround Campaign wants the MTA to streamline antiquated bus routes to reduce sharp turns and allow all-door boarding to ease entry. The city, in turn, should install more bus lanes and islands so drivers don’t have to “weave in and out of traffic,” or maneuver around double-parked vehicles, Burgos-Veras said.
Michael Gunzburg, a lawyer who has represented injured riders, said the MTA hides the true picture of bus calamities.
“They should be a lot more transparent about the total number of accidents, the nature of accidents, the types of injuries, and those claimed to be their fault,” he said.
Recent court testimony in the case of an injured passenger, The Post reported, revealed that bus drivers call MTA dispatch — not the cops — when crashes occur. A special squad in every borough rushes to the scene to do measurements, interview witnesses and take photos.
“They’ll send people to the scene to mount a defense before the injured victim is even loaded into an ambulance,” said personalinjury lawyer Keith Sullivan, who called the number of accidents “astronomical.”
Crashes occur when the vehicles make turns, he said, and bus drivers may not even feel the impact of hitting a pedestrian or bicyclist.
In one case, a bus driver dragged a 58-year-old woman six blocks after striking her near the BrooklynBattery Tunnel in October 2016. He stopped only after a frantic pedestrian waved him down. He was charged with failing to yield to a pedestrian.
The MTA defines collisions as “any time a bus comes into contact with anything, no matter how it happens,” said spokesman Shams Tarek.
The collision records do not state whether the bus drivers were at fault.
Many passengers get hurt while riding buses or when getting on and off. One woman was slammed to the ground by an approaching bus as she stepped off the curb, and suffered six foot fractures, her lawsuit claims. A jury found the MTA fully liable because bus drivers are trained to avoid such accidents. Among other serious incidents:
Seven passengers were taken to the hospital when their bus rammed into parked cars on Staten Island.
A rookie bus driver on the job for just three days failed to apply the parking brake on a Brooklyn street in June. Her bus careered backward, struck a pedestrian and four parked cars, before slamming into a church. The driver was suspended for “several weeks,” retrained and reinstated, the MTA said.
A 70-year-old woman, Carol Bell, was “cut in half ” by a bus at the Fulton-Sackman intersection in Brooklyn in November 2015 while using a walker to cross the street, a witness told reporters. The driver pleaded guilty to leaving the scene and was sentenced to probation.
MTA drivers often struggle to maneuver through the BrooklynBattery Tunnel. Buses had at least 120 crashes and fender-benders in or near the tunnel during the 31 months.
MTA spokesman Tarek downplayed the steep numbers, saying the agency tallied 55 collisions per million miles in 2017, down from 92 in 1988.
“Riding a bus is one of the safest ways to get around on New York City streets,” Tarek said.