Hey, there! Log in / Register
Oh, for Christ's sake: T says trolley driver was texting
By adamg on Fri, 05/08/2009 - 10:34pm
NECN breaks the news with a tweet.
The Globe has more details, says he was texting his girlfriend:
MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas said it was difficult "to contain my outrage" at the driver's action ...
NECN reports he was texting her because he couldn't get her on his cell phone while driving the train.
You may recall how T management made a big deal of telling train drivers to stay off the phone after last year's fatal Riverside crash (for which cell phone use was eventually ruled out as a cause).
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Tipping point
This might be an opportunity for the MBTA to institute a major cultural change.
Saying things at press conferences won't do anything, but what I think might is shaking up the small percentage of operators who would otherwise screw up safety in the near future.
Texting while driving should be seen as abhorrent, and that should be universal.
I'm not criticizing MBTA operators in general here. Most seem to take safety seriously.
Unless Danny Boy somehow has HARD EVIDENCE
that one of the drivers was indeed texting (highly unlikely), he has NO business whatsoever making such a claim at this time. Further, given the lack of hard evidence to support Dan's statement thus far, the media has no business reporting it as fact either.
But what really bothers me is, when any accident or crash happens these days, one of the first statements by people is always "he/she must have been texting/on cellphone".
Um, watch the video
The operator freely admitted to Transit Police detectives that he first tried to call his girlfriend, then started texting her while leaving Government Center. He looked up to see the red lights on the back of the train in front of him and by that point it was too late. He then turned over his cell phone which is now in police custody.
Again, he deserves jail time.
Did you watch the interview video?
The operator was interviewed by Transit Police detectives and admitted that his texting caused the accident. The detectives have the cellphone in their possession, with the incriminating text message still stored on it. I think that is plenty.
Ha
Looks like Arborway and I both posted the same thing at the same time :-)
Thanks Arborway and dirtywater77
for the clarification. I had not seen the interview video, rather, I was just reacting to the initial post.
Open mouth, insert foot ...
I dunno about hard evidence
but the crash appears to have kept at least one love-struck 20-something from getting laid, though his long-term prospects seem somewhat improved due to the effects of bonding-under-duress. Their first kid may be named Charlie, after all.
Cultural Changes MBTA needs to implement NOW
Immediately cease the practice of keeping regular block signals set at red, thus forcing Green Line operators to stop even when THERE IS NO REASON for the train to stop.
Eliminate the provision in the operating rules that gives operators the authority to pass a stop signal after waiting a minute. If a signal has failed, they should only pass it after getting permission to do so from the dispatcher.
They don't all stop for reds
You are correct that the signaling system in the central subway is a mess... but from personal experience, I'd say the operators don't always stop and wait the full minute. I've watched some of them blow through multiple reds that seemed to be red for no reason. It left me with the impression that the signaling is useless and the drivers are basically just "eyeballing it" to keep proper separation from the trains ahead of them.
And that exactly proves my point why "absolute stop"
signals should not be used except at switches where a train always needs to stop - an operator who gets used to blowing through red signals because they expect there will be nothing ahead of them will be less likely to react in a timely manner when the signal is red because there is a train in the next block.
And I see this behavior myself as well- it happens almost every morning on trains between North Station and Government Center - where nearly every block is intentionally set up as an absolute stop signal.
You may want to add
You may want to add immediately ceasing the practice of not using any basic common sense while operating a large moving vehicle with many unstrapped people riding within, but you'll have to talk to the union about that.
That's not due to the union, that's on management
for not running enough trains to reasonably accommodate the passenger load. But that gets us into an entirely different can of worms.
Sorry, don't quite follow
Sorry, don't quite follow you - what does the number of passengers on the train have to do with the driver not doing stupid things like texting or phoning while driving? And will the union protect this guy, or cut him loose? Can he expect a nice retirement package or is 22 months not enough time put in?
union's role
Personally, I hope the guy loses his job and doesn't get near a position of responsibility until he manages to pull his head out of his rear, which in this case may require a tractor.
But don't blame the union for representing him. When a union member faces discipline or termination, the union has a legal obligation to provide fair representation. Sure, they can decide the management decision is appropriate (and I hope they don't fight this one), but they can't bail on him completely.
That's probably a good intuition, but...
...the accident just happened, the driver in question is injured, nobody yet has a sufficiently accurate and complete picture of what happened.
It's only proper to investigate before assigning blame and taking any action against individuals.
He confessed
It's not an accident. An accident is what occurs when something unforeseen occurs. This was very much the natural conclusion to the course of action he chose to take.
I think that the proper
I think that the proper mechanism for this is "suspended, pending investigation." Even if you have a driver saying he was texting. I highly doubt that I'll be convinced otherwise.
Sorry Finn, I misread your previous comment.
Batting 0 for 2 on accurate interpertation of posts in this thread. Guess I'd better quit while I'm behind.
And I agree with you 100 percent that this operator appears to lack basic common sense. This seems to be a growing trait among a lot of cellphone users these days (perhaps the RF leakage has something to do with it - just kidding).
And frankly, I can't see the union backing this guy. Somehow, I don't think "We are defending the rights of our members to act stupid and crash trains" would go over too well with the public.
Send the train operator to jail
Really. Arrest him and set an example for the other MBTA operators. The kind who were on their phones and having their friends stand with them and chat while they operated trains and buses right after the crash LAST May. The ones too stupid to function or take anyone else's safety into consideration. Like the one I reported to the T and never got a followup phone call or letter about.
But don't worry car commuters. You can have your fun too.
I don't think that punishing
I don't think that punishing one driver is the best way to change the culture. That's a punishment from the top. You need all the drivers to take pride in the utmost professionalism, and for them to know that it's the professional duty of all operators to report any slips by anyone, in the interests of safety.
I'm sure the MBTA already has some degree of this, but I have witnessed MBTA operator screw-ups that you just wouldn't see by, say, airline pilots.
It's not the best way to change things
I think sending him to jail - not probation, not a fine - is the best option for him and will help matters with the larger MBTA culture. Completely changing the latter will require other, more extensive measures.
First off, using a cell phone while operating a vehicle? You're fired. No second chances. Right now it's termination on the third offense. There shouldn't be a first. You don't accidentally text or call someone. It's not hard to simply not do it.
There is an impossibly long waiting list to get an interview for a Green Line operator position. The economy is in the toilet. He's a failure at his job and utterly replaceable. He also makes those who do work hard and follow the rules look like trash in the eyes of the public. Thanks Mr. Unnamed Unemployed.
The best thing to do then, overall,
is to enforce the 'zero tolerance for cell-phoning/texting while operating an MBTA train" rule firmly to begin with, and make it clear to both longtime and newcomer MBTA employees that this practice is grounds for dismissal, period!
If the incriminating message is/was still stored in the guilty MBTA operator's cellphone, why does the investigation have to be so long? As at least two posters here pointed out, the admission on the part of the MBTA operator of cellphoning/texting on the job, plus the iincriminating message that was still stored in the guy's cellphone should be sufficiently incriminating evidence, imho.
OMG, I could have been on that train (but wasn't)
If I had stayed at work a little later, and had ridden my usual subway route home instead of walking to the Volvo Race Village at Fan Pier, I could easily have been one of the folks injured in this accident.
Glad you weren't
I'm glad you weren't on that train, and I'm glad you're OK!
Guess you lucked out, Ron.
Thankheavens.
The mayor of Slumerville!
Oh no, then who would be around to organize protests against IKEA and Olive Garden??
Bitches love texting.
You know, I haven't seen any
You know, I haven't seen any T employees texting while driving, but I do see many young T employees who text while seemingly coming home on my train after their shift, so it's not inconceivable. Also, I must say the younger employees (and a few of the older ones) seem to dress very slovenly, on and off the job - shirt tales hanging outside the pants of their uniforms seem to be commonplace, and many seem to give off a rather detached air while performing their duties. I just gotta wonder about the professionalism of some of these hires...how seriously do they take these jobs? I've been riding the T for forty years (Ma used to take us to the Frog Pond when we were kids on the Orange Line) and it seems to be the average age of T employees is getting younger (or maybe I'm getting old).
Surly, slovenly, detached,
Surly, slovenly, detached, disinterested. Sounds about right to me.
Whit
Texting Bus Driver
I was on the bus home to Melrose one night a couple years ago, and the bus driver was texting - and not looking at the road at all - about 1/2 the trip home. I was never so glad to get off the bus. Haven't seen a texting bus driver since then, but have had plenty who've been talking on their cell phones and not giving the road their full attention.
hindsight armchair quarterbacking
When they're stopped, you can go up to them and say discreetly something like, "[Sir or Ma'am], now's not the time for that," in whatever style works for you. If they don't clue in and they indicate that they intend to keep driving that way, you can stay at front of the bus, state the problem loudly enough so that some of the other passengers can know what's going on, and dial the Transit Police if possible. (If you back down at that point, suddenly you've got a driver who is possibly not only distracted but flustered and/or belligerent.)
An alternative to confronting the driver is to phone the MBTA. You could insist that they radio to halt the bus and send a replacement driver. That might cost the driver a job, though, when a polite word with them would've jolted them back to professionalism.
Don't let someone drive impaired. Not only are they likely to cause an accident now or in the future, but some of the responsibility would then be on the person who saw the accident waiting to happen but didn't speak up.
You shouldn't need to ask
They know they're not supposed to be engaging in that kind of behavior. If they do, they can enjoy the unemployment line.
The solution is to call the Transit Police right then and there.
I did report the texting
I did report the texting driver. I did not confront her because I knew her to be one of those nasty-tempered drivers who get all up in a person's face.
Never saw her on my route again, probably not coincidentally.
heh!
Maybe they fired her! One can only hope.
Here's a simple idea - require operators to
surrender their cell phones to a supervisor when they report to the depot they pick up their bus or train at. All T buses and trains have radios, so they don't need the phone to communicate with the dispatcher while on the job.
At the end of their shift, they see their supervisor and reclaim their phone.
And if they don't turn in their phone to their supervisor and are caught with it on the job, immediate one week suspension. Caught using it on the job, immediate termination.
Problem solved.
Yep
This has been my thought for quite a while now. Schools force students to leave phones at home or in lockers. There's no reason why MBTA drivers should be allowed to carry their cell phone on them.
emergency and breaks
Emergency use, as a backup to radio.
Also, they might have breaks when they don't have passengers and aren't driving.
There are backup systems in place
The only phone a train operator should ever use on the job
I'm not saying that
I'm not saying that emergency use is a super-strong argument for permitting operators to carry a cellphone while on duty. However, I think it's obvious that a fixed emergency call device somewhere along the tracks does not cover all the emergency scenarios that a cellphone in the pocket does.
Did you read the caption?
Do you stand on the third rail to reach it or just lean over and take your chances? (use this phone and you may be nominated for the Darwin Awards-posthumously as is always the case)
I wrote the caption
The phone is positioned so you can pick it up without leaving the train.
I think it connects you to a voicemail menu
"If you just rear-ended another train, press one. If your hair is standing on end, step away from the third rail and press two. To listen to your messages, press three. If you're looking for a good time, press four. If you left your trolley car in gear, press five then run back and set the parking brake. To request a pickup from The Ride, press six. To report a Mooninite sighting, press seven. If the twentieth anniversary of your hiring date is approaching, press eight to be connected to our Pension Department."
"If you're looking for a
"If you're looking for a good time, press four."
Actually, the correct key sequence for that is "eight, six, seven, five, three, oh, nine"...
Seriously, though, this moron (T driver) needs his butt fired five minutes ago.
Not convincing
Any call that would need to be made by cell phone could be made by a passenger (or through any of the other phones in the tunnels). School students have lunches, but they're still not allowed to pull out their phones.
We'll have to disagree on
We'll have to disagree on the emergency benefits of having a cellphone. Passengers aren't always in the vehicle, you can't always get to them, they might not be responsive or rapid enough, etc.
Regarding prohibiting the carrying of phones and the comparison to schools: transit drivers are not children. If you see prohibiting the carrying of phones as appreciably more effective than prohibiting non-emergency use of phones while on duty... that sounds to me like you have very low professionalism expectations for the drivers. Which I'd say would mean you have bigger problems to resolve your drivers than whether or not they carry a phone.
Low professionalism expectations
Given the incident that started this, I'd say that's about correct.
It would make enforcement easier. See a cell phone on a driver in the vehicle, they're fired.
One person
That's one driver, in an exceptional situation. The policy, on the other hand, would apply to all drivers.
Let me reformulate: anyone you don't trust to carry a cellphone, you shouldn't trust to be a driver at all.
Find someone you trust, and hire him/her, and treat him/her like a professional.
Yes, that's the bigger point
The farther you go down the road of "zero-tolerance fully-mechanized human automaton", the more you breed resentment and malicious compliance. (Not that the T isn't pretty far down that road already.)
Unless the job position truly requires a robot-we-can't-build-yet, you'll get better, smarter performance by treating the employee like a professional. It's not a white-collar thing vs. a blue-collar thing; I've met plenty of plumbers and electricians and carpenters (union!) who take pride in their work, and would never think of cutting corners - and it's not because they follow a rulebook specifying exactly how many pounds of force to use when swinging the regulation-weight hammer.
It's the difference between "Your job is to follow these rules to the letter or you're fired" and "Your job is to get people around safely, quickly, and conveniently". Responsibility requires responsibility.
Morlocks
Right, because not bringing something on the train that didn't even exist when the trolleys were built would magically turn all T workers into Morlocks.
Pride in your job is a great thing. The lack of it, or of common sense, can be dangerous. But it's much easier to check at the door for a cellphone than for pride. And good luck firing somebody for lack of pride. Pride check! Jones, you shrugged! You're fired!
As for professionals, comparing a 24-year old kid who makes 30K a year to drive a trolley to a master carpenter is silly. It's not a particularly skilled job, nor does it require education or years of training. Maybe he could have developed into a professional some day, as some T drivers undoubtedly are. But the actual driving of the train is a marginally skilled job, more like monitoring a facility than driving a car. The bigger part of the driver's job is just paying attention. Which he failed to do. The professionals would be the drivers who can pay attention all the time, and never miss a beat. No professional T driver would use a cellphone while driving, so this regulation won't affect the professionals at all - just the kids suffering from extended adolescence who would otherwise be flipping burgers.
There are plenty of professionals at the T. For example, Mr. Grabauskus, Mr. Aloisi, and Mr. MacDougall. And I agree with those professionals when they say ban the cellphone for drivers. There's no professional reason for them to have cellphones, and they can only be a detriment to their job.
Morlocks?
The Morlocks who harvested the surface-dwellers? Now I'm having second thoughts about descending into their subterranean passageways.
Seriously, operating a train carries a great deal of responsibility and requires discipline.
Some crap-for-brains operators have been shirking that responsibility. Apparently, shirking is not too uncommon, which suggests that it's a cultural problem that T management should have observed and fixed. Management dropped the ball. Then, when forced by PR of a high-profile incident, instead of fixing the problem and instilling a renewed sense of professionalism, T management essentially acknowledges that they do not believe their operators to be even minimally responsible (where do I sign on to the next class-action lawsuit?), and they send the same message to the operators.
I'm not significantly affected by this issue myself. I just don't like to see people do stupid things, like demand immediate firings based on sketchy initial news reports, or telling employees that management expects less of them rather than that they expect more.
LOL FINE
problem is they can't wholesale figure out who those people are tomorrow, and replace them (union won't have that!). until that can happen, then things need to fall on the side of the public's safety. i really think it would be pretty god damned stupid to die in a public transit accident. really, there are so many ways to waste a life... i hope i can get old and die for some reason that's worth the effort, not because some high school educated jackass was texting to his cutie pie
Cell phones in school
Kaz writes, "School students have lunches, but they're still not allowed to pull out their phones." Of course they're allowed to pull out their phones. They just can't have them during class. The cafeteria is a fine place for cell phones.
Policies Vary
My kids have to put their phones in their lockers and the phones have to stay there during the day. Ditto for all other electronic widgets.
My sons do use their phones on the bus sometimes, mainly to ask "can I go to my friend's house?". When I was out of town last week, my son used his I-touch to hook to an unguarded network to send me an e-mail while his bus was loading up.
Let's Police T Conductors
I see MBTA drivers on their cell phones all the time. Hell, I wrote about it last year after the January accident that sent nine people to the hospital.
From now on whenever I see an MBTA conductor on his or her cell phone, I'm going to snap a picture and post it on Twitter for the rest of Boston to see. As a matter of fact, I did this last June, back when I first had the idea. I hope others join me in this effort, too. If the MBTA isn't going to police their own employees then we're going to have to do it for them.
One a lighter note, Police have released transcripts of the text messages from Friday’s accident.
I agree that we should all
I agree that we should all be policing drivers. As I posted in the first report of the accident I was on a packed D line train and the driver was texting the entire time. You would think after the train operator was killed while texting that would be enough for other drivers not to do it!
He was the tenth T driver caught texting over the past year
Channel 5 reports, says the T now says this is why employees can't have nice things, will now ban all cell phones among workers.
Good. Perfect. Long overdue.
Now they can perhaps work, at work, and make phone calls when not at work, like good, responsible working people should... and it'll be much easier for a nobody T-rider like me to get the T to "put a letter in the personnel file" of the next idiot who's yammering away while they're supposed to be worrying about getting people safely from some place to some other place. I mean, it's not a complicated job but it does require full attention.
dan G's nothing if not the master of the obvious decision. Now, if he could only master the art of planning ahead, that'd be something to celebrate.
Like we get the government we deserve...
...I guess we get the employees or employer we deserve.
Ban Headphones Too Please!
My kids were let off of the bus a half mile past their stop one day because the dimwit at the helm decided to put his headphones on, crank them to 11, and ignore their repeated "stop requested" signals and shouting until the kids went up and got his attention. (oh but you DIDN'T RING THE BELL he said. Stupid asswipe, there isn't a bell on your bus (unless you count the dumbell driving it) ... it says STOP REQUESTED and blinks a light!)
Minor issue, but unnerving. If a driver can just decide to finish his route without stopping for passengers, it is a problem. If his hearing was compromised, it is unacceptable in any case.
Cellphones, headphones, IPods...
...all having the same effect of completely distracting us from our immediate surroundings. It's aggravating enough to have to navigate around some idiot yammering or texting away on a cell while walking on the sidewalk. But this near-disaster last night is a huge warning: We're dealing with a generation of folks who are tethered to these gadgets and to the idea that one can multitask regardless of the setting.
I know it's not purely generational -- at least based on the not-so-occasional Massholes who run the stoplight near my home in J.P. with cells glued to ears -- but it's very much an under-35 (or thereabouts) phenomenon.
Best crash-related tweet
From Fitzroy:
If I'm gonna trust someone
If I'm gonna trust someone to drive public transit then I want to trust 'em with a personal cellphone - in their pocket. They do get breaks, and on their breaks they should be allowed to do reasonable things like check in on sick loved ones, plans for after-work, personal business, etc. The issue is inappropriate use of these devices while performing their duties.
Not just phones either. It is my understanding Mass law forbids wearing stereo headphones while operating a motor vehicle.
How can misuse of distracting devices be managed? Trivially. Enable the T's complaint line to accept MMS (picture) messages. See someone misbehaving send it in. Right then. Vehicles full of passengers, most with camera-equipped cellphones, all glaring in ire at the back of the miscreant driver's head.
Then have the T dispatch police, inspectors, starters, whomever to confirm & cite any issues.
No
If I'm going to trust someone to drive public transit, I'm going to trust them to follow the rules. As a group, they've broken that trust so they lose their convenience of having their phones. I can't even *carry* a cell phone into most of the courthouses in the city (turned off or not!). That would just be the disruption of a courtroom if it rang or whatever. Here, we're dealing with disruption of the city's transportation system and the potential for HIGH casualties as well as the loss of a million dollars of the taxpayers' money for the totaled vehicle!
All of which occurred just fine prior to the 1980s and the introduction of the mobile phone. Where do they take their break? Put a phone in for them. Let them use it for free. Hell, give'em 2, just in case one of the other employees is using one at the time. But this isn't just isolated to Boston mass transit, there are news stories and videos all over the web of mass transit workers texting or calling and driving and then getting into an accident. The job is probably pretty repetitive and boring and these people think after months and years of doing it over and over they can do it with their eyes closed. They are wrong and it's costing all of us heavily. Time to take away the siren song of the cell phone as an escape from their tedium.
Agreed on all points.
yes and yes. Somehow the world made it all the way to 1980's without any of this e-crap, and somehow managed to hold together.
Phones are nice distractions for people with boring jobs. exactly. and people doing boring jobs lose attention, and if that job NEEDS attention at all times, then that's an immediate and serious problem... so, yeah, fix the boringness, and workers will discover they no longer have the time to make idle calls to pallys when they should be working..
does anyone know the cause
does anyone know the cause of the may 28 2008 green line crash?
The NTSB report is still
The NTSB report is still pending. It should be out before the end of the summer.
Before the end of the summer?
That's crazy!
In the meantime, there'll be other incidents like the two horrific incidents posted, and, when another person gets seriously injured or killed, it'll be too late.
Inconclusive or rare findings
They have long ago ruled out phone or texting in that accident. They have also ruled out track and signal and mechanical problems. That leaves simple operator error, operator medical issues (seizure, low blood sugar, etc.) and the like.
I can't think of much else they should be in a hurry to release - either they don't know why the operator plowed into the forward car and that will be the limit of the investigation, or they do know what caused the accident and it isn't anything that the T can systematically address anyway.
If, indeed the operator of the MBTA train that crashed
If, indeed the operator of the MBTA train that crashed, resulting in injuries to a bunch of people
did have some sort of medical issue(s), such as seizures, low blood sugar, etc., why wasn't the operator of the MBTA train that crash tested for that at some point? Or was he?
Your screening plan would be ...
First of all, this is the 2008 incident we are talking about.
Secondly, the female operator was in her early 20s. You cannot assume that she had known medical issues given her age, and most medical conditions alone do not disqualify you from driving a train.
Thirdly, if you have a screening program in mind with sufficient sensitivity and specificity that can be shown to be predictive of enough potential accidents to be worth its cost, I'd love to hear about it.
Again, if there were a finding that would have immediate consequence (think fire truck barreling down mission hill here ...) we would already know about it. My guess is that they either have no idea why she didn't brake, or it is something individual and unusual that won't lend itself to any policy initiatives that would change anything.
Great minds think alike
Jinx!
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
It was a "she," wasn't it?
Also, it's pretty hard to determine whether physiological anomalies occurred before someone crashed and died of their injuries or after. Lab results are going to show brain trauma and organ failure after someone gets mangled and dies of her injuries. Sometimes they can tell if some of that started happening before the impact, but often times they can't.
It probably would have been released soon after the accident if there was evidence that she certainly blacked out while driving. So they're probably doing an absolutely thorough investigation to back up what's going to end up being a hypothesis.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
The trolley that will have to be scrapped
Tom8201 posted this video of trolley 3612 in happier days on the Riverside line last July:
Bill estimates the cost of replacing the trolley at $1 million to $1.4 million, making the guy's message possibly the most expensive text message ever.
What's the real cause of this "stupidity"?
This will NOT be the last instance of a tragedy caused by a worker who didn't take his responsibilities seriously.
I think it's important to identify root causes here. I am not the first to notice a new level of immaturity in today's workers. Specifically, employers are reporting 1) a decreased sense of accountability along with 2) an increased sense of entitlement. Think about it for one minute, and you begin to see that's a dangerous combination.
I'd go further, but the following, written by a high school teacher, does a better job than I ever could:
http://donaldgallinger.com/dons-blog/jack-from-mis...
I think imprisonment is necessary here. It may be unfair to the young driver, who perhaps was never taught a sense of social responsibility by the adults in his life. But neither were thousands of young people who are just entering the workforce. The only way to prevent unnecessary loss of life and limb may be to "shock and awe" these new workers.
As a more permanent measure, we MUST start teaching kids better values.
Git offa my lawn!
After dealing with older workers in state-funded positions at UML, I'm not so sure this is a problem of youth. I encountered many older workers who would tell you it wasn't their job to do their job, and spend their days in either a confused fog of non-decision or doing crossword puzzles and snapping at anyone who needed anything from them - or ignoring all requests not from professors until the dean came down their neck. If they weren't pathetic and possessed of borderline-to-low-IQ, they were nasty and surly (which is another way of saying that they were entitled and irresponsible).
Perhaps there are simply more electronic toys to play with, and fewer places for the entitled and irresponsible to hide these days? When there was more hierarchy to protect lamers, and more rigid "stations" or places in society, it was easier to hide such entitled and irresponsible behavior behind refusing to do your job for certain people and be protected by your old boy network.
So I'm not buying that there is anything different about younger workers - save that, maybe, they haven't "earned" the "right" to act like the older workers do? The job market is vastly more demanding now than it used to be for everybody, and some haven't grasped the limits of forgiveness, which are vastly less lenient than in their grandparents' world. (Husband who grew up in a Carmen's Union household is nodding as I write this).
This:
This:
I totally agree with. It is spot-on.
This, however:,
is something that's always gone on and still goes on today.
Off base, caught stealing
Your argument is off base. You're right to think that entitlement is up and accountability down these days, but that didn't lead to this problem. The cause here is pretty clear. This was a crime of boredom. The job of a T driver is pretty mundane. You've got maybe 2-3 meters to read, about 5-10 switches to push (of which, you only use about 3 regularly), and absolutely no deviation from your designated path (well, if you do deviate, you've got bigger problems anyways). When things are running smoothly (well, as smoothly as they ever run at the MBTA), this lack of interesting development and less-than-engaging activity goes on for hours, days, weeks, months, years. Go, stop, open doors, shut doors, go, stop...
Now, take that boring rote situation and move it into today's attention-deficit, always-exciting life full of camera cuts, sound bites, and flashing lights. If you're not twittering, texting, sexting, online, in line, then you're outta time! We're an in-touch society and the T driver is about the most isolated you can get as jobs go these days (you know, so that they can spend all their effort "focusing" on two lights, three meters, and a switch button).
The temptation is HUGE to just "keep doing your job" while also diverting your attention to that text you just got or making a quick phone call (you know, because this light always takes forever to change anyways and you talk in your car all the time!). It's 3 dials, 2 switches, only 25 mph, and the track isn't going anywhere...what harm is there in one more thing to look at?
The temptation needs to be removed and I wouldn't be surprised to find nearly every other transit agency making this exact same rule soon. As I pointed out in another post, this is HARDLY a Boston/MBTA-specific problem.
It's a boring job, but nobody ever said it was an easy one.
You make good points, but....
Certainly there have always been lots of workers who don't like to work. But I'm not convinced this problem is the same old same old. I'm hardly the first person to comment on a "new wind blowing" in the workplace -- and it's the same new wind that school teachers have been talking about for years. I'm not a teacher, but attended an educators intensive in the mid-90s, and a major theme was "Why are today's students so different?" ("Different" meant harder to teach -- shorter attention spans, less willingness to obey, more ADHD-type behavior in general.) I also know a lot of high school teachers, and they say there's been a similar "difference" over the past 10 years or so -- a sort of "Hey, I showed up, where's my gold star?" thing. Then college professors started seeing this about 3 or so years ago ("All my high school teachers loved my essays, you're mean!"). And at a corporate HR conference last year, the talk was about this "new kind of employee" who is entering the workforce NOW, expecting high salaries and perks the first day on the job. So it seems there's been a distinct trend for quite awhile.
And yes, these jobs certainly ARE boring. They always have been, but there's evidence to support your excellent observation that newer workers are too used to multi-tasking to be able to stand any kind of boredom. This is not a good thing! Everyone seems to think the "ability to multi-task" is a great virtue, but the inability NOT to multitask appears to create problems that outweigh the benefits. Plus, multi-tasking itself is a double-edged sword. In case anyone's interested, there's a fascinating (and pretty funny) article on multi-tasking here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/multitasking
For public safety, the boredom factor in jobs like this should be corrected (and could be pretty easily, I think). But so should the current inability to focus, AND the attitude of entitlement.
Not the T Drivers fault...
Okay, it is, but there's some else-something bigger-behind this incident. The [driver] was born most likely sometime in the late '80's, when the age of entitlement, mulitasking, and excessive use of gadgets was just simmering to the surface. Admittedly, I'm guilty of all three things mentioned above, but I'm not a trolley driver with a responsibility to the people.
[insert jaw-droppingly large number here] die of gadget-related accidents each year, mostly cell-phone vehicle crashes, because people have been mulit-tasking. Multi-tasking is all fun and games until someone loses an eye-or a life.
Anyways, people text, twitter, etc. in their moving cars, trucks, etcetera, all the time. As a whole, our culture finds that "acceptable". Adults get sucked into the mess by their kids/grandkids. Young people grew up with it.
Educators sometimes seem hard-pressed to hand out punishments when a kid is caught breaking the rules, and when they do it's probably less than if the kid had done it, in, say, 1953. These kids will grow up and expect this from there employers-thinking they can get away with it.
I agree with Kaz that they shouldn't be allowed phones on the job. They survived before-they'll survive now. And if someone complains that "they need a phone to call their sick spouse/kid/relative/etc." or something of the same, set up a pay phone or two in the break room. Problem solved.
Oh yeah-and I agree with Grabauskas's decision to ban cell phones.
---panda
There are two numbers I would like to know
1. What percentage of people think it is acceptable for others to text or Twitter while driving a car?
2. What percentage of drivers sometimes text or Twitter while driving a car?
(Ask them the questions in that order.)
I don't know.
To tell you the truth, I don't know.
However, I made that assumption(never assume!) because:
1: Can you honestly say you know someone with a car without a cell without text/internet capabilities-and if so, are they under 35?People get tempted.
Of course, it isn't likely I could find you those percentages, anyhow. While "culture"(you know, Hollywood, the media) may look the other way, law official's won't. Although I don't believe Massachusetts has a law against cell phone use in cars, other states do.
Plus, it's not like people are going to document every time they use their phones in the car.
---panda.
Uh
I'm not understanding your argument, but I'm done with this topic.