Kick her off the bus?Follow

So here's the situation.

You're on the bus on the way home in the late evening after dark. There's a mom with a young child on the bus with you. The toddler has been screaming for the past half-hour constantly; and there's still another 15 minutes left in the ride. The continual noise is starting to wear on people. About then the bus driver has had enough. She pulls the bus over and kicks the mother and child off. According to her it's too distracting and she can't drive the bus safely. Some of the passengers are quite upset that she'd kick a mom and baby off the bus, after dark, in what isn't the nicest section of town and file complaints.



Here's the linky; they are investigating the incident. As a parent with two young kids I'm in the mom's camp on this one.

Also a transcript of the bus driver's discussions with dispatch.

Where do you fall?

Edited, Oct 5th 2011 9:38am by someproteinguy

Based purely on that one person's testimony it sounds like the bus driver over reacted, but I'm not about to vilify someone based entirely on the word of one person.

If this woman really couldn't drive a bus with a kid crying, she has no right being a professional bus-driver.

If the kid was actually screaming at the top of their lungs for half an hour, I'm not sure that's fair. Most people would be in the red zone of their stress levels by that point, I imagine.

[EDIT]

If it was just crying, then I'm on the woman's side. If it was nonstop screaming, I dunno whose side I'm on.

Edited, Oct 5th 2011 12:57pm by idiggory

like said above, sometimes you cannot stop an infant from crying. And after reading the article, it makes a point that the mother was not ignoring her childs cries. She actually did everything she could to try and soothe the baby.

I think it says a lot if all of those passengers opted to get off the bus as well, to show their disgust for the bus driver.

The bus driver described it as 'screaming' in the transcript link; others have said it was crying, but accounts vary and it's a subjective thing of course.

Also, the driver has been driving buses for about 10 year IIRC.

Based off what I read in the OP links, I think the driver was wrong. Who knows the "real" story but I'm having trouble imaging a scenario where I'd side with kicking her off the bus.

Tell that to Hawkeye Pierce.

It doesn't seem like there's much to look into. Reading the transcript, it looks like there's no policy for dealing with crying children at the company (going by what the dispatcher said).

That being said, I know that crying and screaming children can be a bother, but if the mother was actually trying to calm the child down, and not just being negligent, I'd have to say the driver is in the wrong.

The baby was an instrument of terror. The bus driver was in the right.

What it comes down to is that this is a case where every option sucks.

The last thing I would want, as someone who regularly needs to ride buses, is a driver who is stressed to the point she was. Yeah, I'd be really f*cking irritated by the screaming kid and the stop. But it's better than getting into an accident because the bus driver is driving stressed and angry.

Remember that we have no clue if she was already stressed out for some other reason. Maybe the kid wasn't being ungodly loud, but that doesn't mean she couldn't have been facing more stress than it was reasonable for someone to have to bear.

COULD she have driven another 15 minutes? I'm positive she could have. But I absolutely don't want a driver that stressed. Frankly, I'm betting that she was past a safe stress level for at least 20 of those 30 minutes.

I can only use myself as a control though. I know how much of my niece's screaming I can take before my driving starts getting reckless (5-10 minutes). This woman actually had kids, to be fair, so I'm sure she's more used to it than I am. But I wouldn't want someone like stressed-out me driving a vehicle with the lives of 30-40 people in her hands.

Like I said, it was a crappy situation. Even if the bus driver just stopped to take 10 minutes to destress before starting to drive more, it would have been safer for everyone. Not saying she should have kicked the mother off, but I don't think driving stressed is a better option.