OC Transpo should adopt graduated licenses so experienced drivers handle double-decker and articulated buses, an inquest heard.
A senior Ministry of Transportation official has recommended OC Transpo move to a system of graduated licences so that only experienced drivers handle heavier double-decker and articulated buses.
Sean Doussept, manager of carrier sanctions and investigations, said such a system recognizes the importance of hands-on experience. A graduated licensing system has been in place for new drivers in Ontario since 1994.
“These vehicles (double-deckers and articulated buses) are heavier, they take longer to stop and they don’t turn in the same way,” Doussept told the Westboro bus crash inquest Monday.
“They have a different centre of gravity so the vehicles behave differently in turns. So you want your drivers to be confident on each vehicle design before you place them in those vehicles — and that comes with experience.”
The inquest has heard OC Transpo driver Aissatou Diallo was six months into her career — and had amassed 55 hours of time behind the steering wheel of a double-decker bus — when she lost control of Bus 8155 as it travelled west on the Transitway on the afternoon of Jan. 11, 2019.
The double-decker, with more than 80 people on board, drifted onto the shoulder of the Transitway, hit a snowbank, a rock wall and another snowbank before slamming into Westboro Station’s bus shelter.
The shelter’s rigid awning crushed nine rows of seats on the right side of the double-decker’s second floor. Passengers Bruce Thomlinson, 56, Judy Booth, 57, and Anja Van Beek, 65, were killed, and 17 others seriously wounded.
The Evening Citizen
The inquest is examining how to prevent similar deaths in the future.
Shari Nurse, chief fleet safety officer for the City of Ottawa, said data shows articulated buses are the most dangerous in OC Transpo’s fleet. They’re involved in more collisions per kilometre than any other type of vehicle, she said.
Nurse agreed some form of graduated licence — possibly a “graduated authority” to operate heavier buses on complex routes — makes sense.
“New bus operators cannot be put into a position where they’re operating the highest risk bus on the highest risk route,” she told the inquest. “That’s just a collision waiting to happen.”
Nurse could not identify OC Transpo’s highest risk routes. Last week, a bus safety expert said inner-city routes are generally considered more dangerous because of the increased number of pedestrians, cyclists and parked cars.
Nurse’s fleet safety officer position was created by the city as part of an action plan put in place in response to a Ministry of Transportation audit that followed the Westboro bus crash.
That plan also led to the introduction of a new program to better assess OC Transpo driver applicants through the use of standardized cognitive tests. Among other things, the tests assess an applicant’s approach towards risk taking.
“Some people were not made for driving and we try not to hire them,” Nurse told the inquest jury. “The pre-hiring assessments really helped us so that we’re not hiring our next collision.”
The City of Ottawa also introduced a GPS telematics system on all of its commercial vehicles, and a pilot program on four (out of 870) of its OC Transpo buses. The telematics system allows information on a vehicle’s speed, braking and cornering to be relayed in real time to a central database, where it can be tracked and analyzed.
The system alerts City of Ottawa drivers whenever they approach an intersection with a red light camera, but otherwise does not communicate in real time with drivers.
The telematics system, Nurse said, has proved “rewarding” for the city’s commercial vehicles and has contributed to improving its safety culture.
Armed with the system, Nurse said, the city was able to introduce a campaign that warned drivers an investigation would be triggered any time a municipal vehicle was found going more than 30 km/h over the speed limit. The program, she said, has produced a general reduction in speed for municipal trucks.
Nurse said she expects OC Transpo will be making a decision in the near future about whether to fully adopt the system, which would come in addition to existing, on-board bus telematics.
Our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark our homepage and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed.
