This week, Torontonians found themselves looking in astonishment at a picture of a damaged bus that had rear-ended a truck. In the \u201caccident\u201d a woman passenger died. Torontonians struggled to understand how a bus driver could drive his bus at considerable speed into the rear end of a huge truck. Coffee shops were filled with conversations about how many public transit accidents and deaths have occurred involving Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) vehicles in 2011 alone.<\/p>\n
The driver of the bus was 52-year \u2013old William Ainsworth. Speculation ran wild as readers wondered about the skills, mind-set and condition of the Ainsworth involved in this week\u2019s accident. Then this morning the media reported that the TTC driver had drugs in his possession.<\/p>\n
What is even more interesting is that after the crash, the driver refused a TTC drug test which killed one passenger and injured 13 others. According to Detective Constable Carl Anderson, police officers at the scene did not conduct a police drug test because they had no reason to think the driver was intoxicated. Which leads many Torontonians to wonder what the police constables thought was the reason that the TTC driver drove a public bus into the rear end of a truck.<\/p>\n
Many TTC riders believe that a TTC driver is regularly monitored and tested for intoxication and the influence of drugs. The fact that even after a crash, a TTC driver was not tested pretty much removes any comfort that TTC riders may have in the TTC\u2019s drug monitoring.<\/p>\n
One can\u2019t help but ask why a TTC driver would refuse a drug test after being in a crash. Wouldn\u2019t a test prove that he wasn\u2019t intoxicated or under the influence, thereby making it easier for the TTC to defend against lawsuits? The only logical explanation is that the TTC driver was hiding something. It is possible, that the consequences of the outcome of the test would be worse than not taking the test.<\/p>\n
Conveniently, it wasn\u2019t until seven hours later that the police found what they believe \u201cmight have been marijuana\u201d. Really…they couldn\u2019t tell?<\/p>\n
As an example of how similar situations are handled in other cities, on May 12th<\/sup>, 2008 in Bullitt County, Kentucky (United States) a bus with more than 50 elementary school students drove into a ditch. The driver was Tammy Capps (37) who was immediately put in jail to face criminal charges and also lost her job. According to Eric Farris (Bullitt County Board of Education attorney), \u201cAll bus drivers who are involved in any kind of accident is tested afterwards to determine if there is any alcohol or narcotics present in their system…There was a positive finding of marijuana in the driver\u2019s system.\u201d In addition bus drivers for the school system are subject to routine and random drug tests throughout the year.<\/p>\n The William Ainsworth accident and how it was handled does not reflect well on the bus driver, the TTC, Mayor Ford and Toronto Police Services. The information released by the media and information in reference to Ainsworth leads one to come up with at least one story of how a public bus driver ended up crashing his bus into the rear end of a large\u00a0 truck, which killed one passenger (Jadranka Petrova, 43) and injured 13 others.<\/p>\n If the driver of a private car had crashed into the rear end of a large truck, resulting in the death of a passenger, that driver would be charged with at least careless driving and possibly manslaughter. What was the Ainsworth charged with?<\/p>\n It will be interesting to see how the TTC handles this. If they don\u2019t end up firing Ainsworth then the riding public will lose much faith and confidence in Toronto\u2019s public transit, even more than has already been lost with the scandals of the last two years. If Mayor Ford doesn\u2019t do something, then the voters will look poorly upon him. As for police services, it is unknown what they can do at this point however, with the death of a passenger the public expects some serious charges.<\/p>\n It will be quite an accomplishment if the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113, which represents Transit workers, gets away without firing Ainsworth or having him charged.<\/p>\n Even more interesting will be watching what Ainsworth\u2019s attorney does to keep him out of jail and avoiding liability from the crash. As for the stress Ainsworth must be facing, it could be enough to lead one to smoke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week, Torontonians found themselves looking in astonishment at a picture of a damaged bus that had rear-ended a truck. In the \u201caccident\u201d a woman passenger died. Torontonians struggled to understand how a bus driver could drive his bus at considerable speed into the rear end of a huge truck.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}