Driving Miss Dippsy

Still learning the ropes on how to drive a bus. Some days it seems a piece of cake, others a nightmare. While cornering her bus today, one of the experienced drivers knocked down a pedestrian. There isn't any way to describe what the roads are like on the Florida University campus, but picture a chinese fire drill on speed, led by the Marx Brothers, and gone quite mad.

Bikes, scooters, skateboards, roller skates, you name it and the kids are flitting about in and out of traffic on them. In this particular instance, the driver was taking a crowded turn nice and slowly when the student actually walked into the back of the bus.

For real. Wasn't hit or run over, but enough witnesses reported the same thing, namely the fact that the girl seemed enraptured by whatever was playing on her headphones, stepped into the street, and rebounded to the asphalt when the laws of physics took over. She received nothing more than a skinned knee, and such minor scrapes are commonplace for several reasons.

The buses are far too big for the old, narrow roadways. Way too big. This means too big of a blindspot and the most skilled operator can do everything right and still be wrong. Can't stop or veer around something you can't see. The maximum length for on-campus transportation should be 30' in length, and there are tons of crappy electric buses sitting around that are of no use to anyone, but the Loons love them and would welcome their use with open arms. They average 20-26 feet in length, are extraordinarily slow but the speed limit is 20 mph so who should care.

Both students AND faculty members are dingbats. This will not change, BUT, more has to be done to continue to pound common sense into the otherwise senseless. Rollerblades and skates and skateboards need to be banned from certain high-traffic areas, and the bike lanes should be ...duh...where the bicycles are driven.

Take some of the time spent preaching about how Military Recruiters should be banned from campus, and on a regular basis reinforce the amazing concept that when crossing the street one should look both ways, and not attempt to out-run or nudge aside a bus. But it won't happen. Outrunning or nudging aside a bus for sure, and reinforcing life and death manuevers means talking about yucky stuff and would eat into the "Let's Paint The Bus Stops In Rainbow Colors" spare time and we can't have that.

A tragedy was narrowly averted, and by nothing more than random chance. What it'll take is some rich kid to step in front of a mega-ton piece of moving machinery, and presto-chango, the rules will be re-written to include paying attention to one's COMMON FUCKING SENSE.