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Feds: Trolley driver was a Masshole
By adamg on Mon, 05/11/2009 - 8:55am
Not only was he texting, he ran a red light.
DICTATORIAL MODERATOR'S NOTE: No more discussions about seeing evil in the eyes of people in MySpace photos. It's gotten to that "Oh, Jesus H. Christ enough already" stage and I'll be deleting further replies on that specific topic.
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Comments
This may be the single best
This may be the single best headline Adam's ever come up with.
I think it could have been
I think it could have been better if it was about the Texting T Tranny Trolley Tragedy.
No sympathy for him, then.
Being fired outright and being tried on criminal charges would absolutely him right, if, indeed he ran a red light, in addition to texting his girlfriend.
btw--I saw his picture--he even looks like a Masshole.
Masshole is a state of mind
This morning I saw a woman in a minivan pull a U-turn in Main St. in Cambridge, with what appeared to be a cellphone held to head with left shoulder, and while she appeared to be talking.
She was trying to look around while she was doing the turn, but that was clearly difficult with her left shoulder up to her ear.
She looked like a perfectly nice woman, but I'm going to call that driving Massholish.
The T driver you claim looks like a Masshole... you'd have to characterize the look of a Masshole.
Ever heard the expression: "The face is the mirror of the soul"?
That easily applies here, imo. That smirking, sneaky smile that the MBTA driver who's texting on the job recently resulted in a crash is a real give-away, imho.
You've never smirked, I take it
I bet you've never even kipled.
Everybody smirks on occasion.
I also might add, however, that the texting MBTA Masshole's smirk also had a particular nastiness to it.
And you've never been nasty?
No, I wouldn't think so, not you, so it might be hard to imagine that somewhere on MySpace there might be photos of hundreds, even thousands of people with nasty, smirky photos that say absolutely nothing at all about them except that they possibly need to stop drinking so much.
I'm not saying that at all, adamg.
I'm not saying I've never been nasty or that I've never done anything wrong. However, for starters, I've never been involved in DUI crashes and gotten myself a record, or any other criminal exploits. Secondly, unlike this particular person (and many others), I do happen to have a conscience.
What you're saying ...
Is that by looking at a bad photo from somebody's MySpace page, you have deduced the fundamental evilness at his core.
And what I'm saying is that that's silly.
It depends on the circumstances.
This:
isn't always be the case, but then
This:
isn't always true, either.
I often go by gut instinct. To paraphrase the old adage:
Go by your instincts, because more often than not, they're right.
That doesn't neccesarily apply for everybody.
...
True, but,
I base it on my own personal experiences.
I heard it as "eyes"
And I'm surprised that someone who has been around a few decades thinks they can read that much into a single snapshot. People aren't that simple.
I'm just saying that
Sometimes, one can.
I still remember the horrific racially-motivated attack back in the early 1980's on a black maintenance man at the Savin Hill MBTA station by five young white toughs, which resulted in his death. Not long afterwards, there was a photograph of the kid who'd led the attack on the African-American maintenance man in the Boston Globe, and the (white) kid who'd instigated the attack looked quite nasty, arrogant and tough--and like he clearly had no conscience about what he'd done.
Correlation and causation
And that's a very different situation.
And you cannot rationally make that logical leap.
the two go hand in hand
Don't cell use and blowing thru red lights go hand in hand? (This is based on my concededly unscientific study of Masshole behavior at the stoplight intersection of Boylston & Lamartine in J.P.)
He deserves to be fired, but before we start calling for him to be thrown in jail, let's remember all the CEO, executive, and public official types who, after committing heinous deeds with intent rather than negligence, at worst suffer the loss of a job, often with a nice severance to boot. This is a 24-year-old who messed up, and it likely will scar him the rest of his life.
Yes, one couldn't have happened without the other
It's just the idea of somebody blowing through a red light underground while texting, well, you know sooner or later somebody's going to get caught doing that above ground. Hopefully before somebody gets hurt.
Further indications of Massholishness
Channel 5: Trolley Driver Has Speeding, Crash Citations On RMV Record.
Wait a minute here -
Boston.com states
Yet, Dan G. stated in his press conference Friday night that the operator admitted to T police he was texting. Since when does a confession become an accusation?
When legal action is in the cards
I wouldn't read too much into that; just standard legalese, innocent until proven guilty, etc.
Point taken. However, IMO, the article could
just as easily have read "Quinn reportedly told authorities he was texting his girlfriend at the time of the crash". Wouldn't this phrase still imply innocent until proven guilty?
Just saw that "news"
That's not news, it's character assassination. Nothing revealed by probing his personal driving record indicates him as a risk for anything he did that day. What point is there to releasing this as "news" other than to prop the story up a bit longer trying to hold people's attentions and sling some mud on someone to which it will easily stick right now?
These media people are SO desperate they're basically finding anything they can on this story because it's so easy to do and then slinging it in front of us all. Sometimes you just need to look at what you've found and realize it is meaningless and let it slide back into obscurity.
WHERE IS THIS FERVOR OVER IMPORTANT ISSUES? Man, I feel more pissed off about seeing this run as "news" than I ever did about the guy screwing up driving the T in the first place.
Why it's fair game
It shows the guy possibly has a predilection to unsafe operation. Possibly if he were just some T shlub caught by an inspector, it wouldn't be warranted, but we're talking about somebody whose alleged (or not) actions sent 50 people to the hospital and did $10 million in damage.
Poor justification
If he regularly blew through red lights, got into more than 1 accident in his ~10 years of driving, or did ANY of that while on the job, then you'd be absolutely right. Instead, we're talking about less than a half-dozen speeding tickets (with absolutely no indication of whether they were "70 in a 65" or "120 in a 25") and 1 at-fault accident (pretty much the default these days to find you at fault..and again, no indication if it was a minor scratch or a 10 car pile-up).
Why don't they have things like severity of violations or recklessness behind the wheel? Because they basically wanted to keep throwing out meat to what they pray remain hungry lions eating it up. Whatever meat they can find, no matter how low quality and unrefined...just get it out there fast.
This is like finding out some guy admits to being a pedophile and then after interviewing the neighborhood you learn that he always had a really cool house at Halloween....and, quick, you put it on the news so everyone can say "OMG, he liked Halloween! I bet it's because he wanted to lure a kid into his house!" When really, he just liked dressing up and scaring people one night of the year.
Well, yay. "OMG, this Quinn guy occasionally sped in his car and got in 1 accident...I bet it's because he's a complete reckless nutjob behind the controls of a vehicle and he was just hoping to kill someone some day." I just can't wait until the media vultures badger the teary-eyed girlfriend on the other end of the text messages to break onto the scene as well.
Tickets >>> Sexuality
What he's got under his uniform - at least that is part of his body - is of no consequence here.
What he did before he was hired is of major consequence - particularly if he lied or covered up a bad driving record to get hired. This guy has not been on the job all that long, and the T requires a nearly clean driving record to start. If there were a name or identity change that masked infractions in excess of the limits when he was hired OR if he lied about his record even, that is very important.
He or she - doesn't matter.
It has to be false to be 'character assassination'
so unless there's some dispute over whether he actually got and paid these tickets, I don't see the problem here.
I disagree
It just has to be the truth portrayed in a slanted and unnecessarily ignominious way. His RMV record doesn't give us any insight into why he did this. I have had an accident within the past 8 years and a speeding ticket and a warning spaced about a year or two apart. I could easily go drive one of their trains given the same training and do it for years without running into the train ahead of me. There was plenty of reason to *check* his driving record, but once you find nothing that any regular person probably has in their own file AND the MBTA says "yeah, we knew all that and none of it even raised a yellow flag for us...even the stuff in NH we didn't know wouldn't have made a difference if we did"...then it's a non-story. Anything you release after that is just for your own greedy headline pimping until you can find the next greasy morsel of gristle to dish on this guy...or something else big and sensational comes along to replace him from the news cycle.
It's insipid...and it's playing out like every overblown media circus always does. Send in the clowns.
It gets better, well, worse
We'll have to disagree on this one.
But I think we can agree on the new "revelation," which I just heard Ed Harding gleefully read, something like:
"Also coming up at, we'll reveal that Aidan Quinn, who is now a man, USED TO BE A WOMAN!"
Then again, Matt Lorch just tweeted:
I dunno, Matt, is the head dead yet?
TV news
We're so doomed.
I'm horrified and disgusted
I'm horrified and disgusted with Boston news in general right now. WHAT, please tell me, does a person's sexual identity have to do with driving the T? The news crews are positively harassing Aiden, his friends, family, neighbors.. trying to dig up whatever they possibly can, for WHAT? I wouldn't show up for a meeting like that without a lawyer.
Here's the rub, Kaz:
A person with that kind of lousy driving record is a dangerous risk to hire out for driving a public vehicle (in this case, the MBTA), where he or she has the responsibility for driving and protecting other people.
Jibberjabber
4 speeding tickets (of unknown caliber) and 1 non-ticketed at-fault accident (of unknown destruction...or lack thereof) is a "lousy driving record"? Do you get out of the house at all?
but he's 24
If that's your lifetime driving record when you're 50, that's one thing. But he racked up all of this before the age of 24.
So what?
It's not as if the texting MBTA driver/Masshole was a 16 year old kid who'd just gotten his license, or even a 15 year old on his learner's permit when he screwed up and got into this crash by texting on the job and getting into this accident that sent 50 people to the hospital with assorted injuries.
Twenty-four, imho, is plenty old enough to know better and act more responsibly while driving any kind of a motor vehicle, be it private or public.
Why do you think I disagree with you about his driving record?
I don't, and therefore find your reply quite puzzling.
Timeline
The first ticket was in 2002 and the next in 2003. I believe that means Quinn was around 17 and 18 at the times of those two tickets. Young, just got a license, and stupid?
The next 2 were last year in NH (and from one report I read they were on the same day...which is just weird). So, he was assumed to be driving fine for the past 6 years with no incidence. Finally, 1 accident last year of absolutely no information since there's no way to tell anything other than they were found at-fault for insurance purposes.
Seriously, *that's* a worrisome driving record? No DUIs, no arrests or total disregard for safe driving other than speeding. On top of that, the MBTA *has* a screening policy and he passed it (with or without the NH tickets). Of the dozens (hundreds?) of drivers they've had how many screw up on the job like this?
This is just not important to the cause of this accident.
OK--THIS is exactly what I mean by mocking and stupid accusatns.
Kaz--this is what I mean by mocking and stupid accusations.
Secondly, Kaz: What kind of a stupid question is this?:
Thirdly, yes, I think that four speeding tickets is not exactly what I'd call a promising record, or an indication of being a trustworthy driver.
Time to get this discussion back on track
So no more discussions about the evil that lurks in all men's souls as exemplified by crappy MySpace photos.
Further replies on this matter will be ruthlessly deleted because I'm tired of discussions being derailed.
driving records.
We should remember that verbal and written warnings do not get recorded on someones drivers record.
It is my professional opinion that 4 speeding tickets and 1 accident for a 24 year old driver is not horrible, but should have been questioned before he got the job. He might have been I don't know.
Yer Both Missing the Point
The T has some basic requirements for operators:
This is basic stuff here - if this guy had all these tickets or three in one year, he may not have been qualified in the first place. If he has racked them up in the two years he has been driving for the T, it doesn't disqualify him but it really doesn't look too good for his judgment behind the wheel. Four citations and an accident in a short number of years is NOT a "normal" driving record.
FYI
That is the only instance of the word "normal" in the entire discussion. Well, okay, now there are two. My contention is not that his private driving record is "normal" (fine, three) but that it is not an indication that he would be trouble as a T driver. Nor do I find that releasing that info as a news story does anything to develop the story or implicate the driver's inability to drive a subway car. It was journalistic fluff used to pad a dead story because the media had nothing else to say.
SwirlyGrrl:
This:
is exactly what I meant.
Not surprising in the least.
This guy's got a record already and they let him drive an MBTA train? Not surprising in the least, given the amount of graft, politics, and patronage here in the state.
It's easy to see by the texting MBTA driver's nasty-looking smile that he's got absolutely no conscience.
What?
Nasty looking smile? Shows he has no conscience? Huh?
Oh, you're joking, right?
She's an Expert in Facial Expressions
IM, why do I suspect that, like my brother who has social difficulties and lacks intuition about human expression, you had to learn facial expressions by rote learning? That your teachers or councilors at some point showed you a bunch of pictures of expressions so you could learn how to "read" them in live humans?
I think it may be your rote recitation of "this facial expression means this always" that I've heard before from people who were so trained. If so, consider that you may have mistakenly taken this training to be prescriptive rather than descriptive - just as you have taken other "suggested practices" to be "absolute fact" or "inviolate rules" in the past.
And people with average
And people with average human expression perceptual ability can be trained to read "microexpressions."
What's most interesting to me is that reportedly there are people who, without training, can beat the researchers on the topic.
Sales people
Are these people in sales? Or do they work for the CIA.
Or both.
I would expect something like those professions for people who are outliers in "reading people".
Silly!
They blog on UHub, natch!
Cops
I think it was a Gladwell essay in which he mentioned one cop the researchers tested. And some anecdote about the cop once making a call in an instant that a kid *wasn't* going to shoot, and he turned out to be correct in not shooting the kid in what would have been justifiable self-defense.
I did run into a person involved in air security once, probably smalltalked with him for a couple hours, and I got the distinct impression by how he tried to position his face dead-on to me and how intently he was watching me on certain conversational turns that he was looking for microexpressions. (I had been doing stock photography of airplanes on an approach over a neighboring town, with a big camera lens, so possible he was working, or it might just have been a coincidence.) I confirmed later that he was familiar with the microexpressions work. Probably not a natural like the cop in the story, though.
Nope.
\
Nope. On the other hand, I learned on my own, through long personal experience.