Terrified passengers en route to Dallas beg bus driver to stop

At some point on the 20-plushour bus trip between Phoenix and Dallas, passengers’ attention turned from the Southwestern scenery to what was going on in the driver’s seat.

“The bus was leaning a little bit,” Philip Hurd told CBS-11 on Thursday, after he and nearly four dozen others had reached the safety of the downtown Dallas Greyhound terminal.

Only the driver seemed unconcerned by her driving, passengers told the station.

“We saw her going like this, and just dozing off,” Jasmine McClellan said, sinking her head and then jerking it up.

“It got to the point we had to raise our voice. ‘Pull over! We have children on this bus!’ ” she said. “She’d be going over the white line, and everyone would be like, ‘Wake up!’ ”

Instead of pulling over, McClellan said, the driver tried to ward off sleep by jabbing herself in the face with a pair of tweezers.

Finally, what CBS called a “mutiny” took place. It was partially captured on video.

A man stood directly behind the driver, clapping his hands above her head as he screamed: “You should have stopped when you were swerving!”

Still not willing to pull over, passengers told CBS that the driver stood up while the bus was still moving to argue with the man.

“So get off the bus,” she said in the video. “I bet I don’t,” the man said. “You’re doing too much.” “No, you’re doing too much.” The man then asked the other passengers who — he or the driver — was doing too much at that moment. “She is!” a chorus replied. The man then ordered the driver to report her exhaustion. “Call them,” he said. “Call them right now!”

“Our drivers are in regular contact with our dispatch office,” a Greyhound spokeswoman wrote in a statement, “and if they state they are feeling tired or fatigued, they are immediately removed from the schedule for at least 12 hours to allow them to get some rest.”