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).
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Comments
It was a "she," wasn't it?
By eeka
Sun, 05/10/2009 - 3:16pm
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
By adamg
Sat, 05/09/2009 - 8:49pm
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"?
By anon
Sun, 05/10/2009 - 9:39am
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!
By SwirlyGrrl
Sun, 05/10/2009 - 10:35am
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:
By independentminded
Tue, 05/12/2009 - 10:46am
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
By Kaz
Sun, 05/10/2009 - 2:10pm
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....
By anon
Mon, 05/11/2009 - 11:03am
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...
By panda
Tue, 06/30/2009 - 3:18pm
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
By neilv
Tue, 06/30/2009 - 3:23pm
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.
By panda
Tue, 06/30/2009 - 3:43pm
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
By neilv
Tue, 06/30/2009 - 4:46pm
I'm not understanding your argument, but I'm done with this topic.
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