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Safety Compromises

Safety Compromises

There are roughly a half-dozen major safety compromises, and a growing number of lesser ones. The most common safety compromises committed have become common because they reduce the most “running time,” and help create the most “recovery time,” at the end of each “run” of a route.

  • Introduction
  • Types of Safety Compromises
    • On-Board Slips and Falls
    • Wheelchair and Passenger Securement
    • Speeding
    • Failure to Kneel
    • Pulling Adjacent to the Curb
    • Stopping on the Wrong Side of an Intersection
    • Boarding and Alighting Accidents and Incidents
    • Rolling Turns and Sharp Turns
    • Passenger Assistance: Standards, Practices & Disincentives
  • Transportation Safety Links
  • Articles
  • Contact Ned Einstein, Transportation Expert
  • Introduction
  • Types of Safety Compromises
    • On-Board Slips and Falls
    • Wheelchair and Passenger Securement
    • Speeding
    • Failure to Kneel
    • Pulling Adjacent to the Curb
    • Stopping on the Wrong Side of an Intersection
    • Boarding and Alighting Accidents and Incidents
    • Rolling Turns and Sharp Turns
    • Passenger Assistance: Standards, Practices & Disincentives
  • Transportation Safety Links
  • Articles
  • Contact Ned Einstein, Transportation Expert

Half of all public transportation incidents are the result of compromises in safety which are deliberate. Those people whose safety is compromised include passengers, pedestrians, motorists, and occasionally bicyclists, motorcyclists and even the vehicle’s driver.

Some of these compromises are made by drivers. But far more often, they are made above the driver level — deliberate compromises in policies, procedures, practices, training, monitoring, scheduling, dispatching, stop selection, system design, rate structures, vehicle design and specification, and many other deviations from industry standards of care. This negligence occurs because safety takes time, and often costs money.

  • Because safety costs money, drivers are paid as little as possible. Driver shortages are routine. So negligent hiring may be common. But negligent retention is rampant. And it is almost always deliberate. Further, good management also costs money. So it is often poor, and usually thin.
  • Because safety takes time, the most common cause of safety compromises is tight schedules. In many incident scenarios (e.g., wheelchair tipovers, or occupants not secured into their chairs), the vehicle was almost always running behind schedule.

As a lawsuit matter, proving safety compromises is critical because errors or omissions which are deliberate often lead to an assessment of punitive damages. Where evidence demonstrates that negligence was deliberate, lawsuits rarely proceed to trial.

Read More…

two NJ transit buses collide at intersection

Links on transportation safety

Recent Posts

  • Bus interior with side facing seats

    On-Board Slips and Falls

  • bus cam wheelchair tip over

    Wheelchair and Passenger Securement

  • A speeding bus is a transportation safety compromise

    Speeding

  • Bus steps closeup

    Failure to Kneel

  • Bus loading and unloading

    Pulling Adjacent to the Curb

  • buses at pedestrian crosswalk

    Stopping on the Wrong Side of an Intersection

  • bus during super storm sandy

    Boarding and Alighting Accidents and Incidents

  • Car crushed by school bus, example of turing accident

    Rolling Turns and Sharp Turns

  • school bus steps

    Passenger Assistance: Standards, Practices & Disincentives

Safety Compromises is an initiative of veteran expert witness and consultant Ned Einstein and Transportation Alternatives (http://www.transalt.com), part of a network of websites established to educate and inform members of the legal profession about critical safety issues in public transportation. Visit Transportation Alternatives’ website to learn directly about Mr. Einstein’s services and expertise in the field.

View Mr. Einstein’s Full Biography

Expert Services, Concepts & Approaches
  • Keeping It Simple — Set loose a real expert, and most cases can be reduced to a small tic-tac-toe game
  • Cases by Vehicle and Client Type
  • Where I’ve Worked — Cases and Attorneys
  • Common Accident and Incident Scenarios
  • How to Turn Small Damages into Big Settlements
  • Commercial Agendas
  • Safety Compromises — Causation of half of all public transportation accidents
  • Mission Statement — Extracting the maximum precedent value from facts
Half of all public transportation incidents are the result of deliberate compromises of passenger, pedestrian and public safety in return for other trade-offs. Learn more, visit our affiliate sites:
  • wheelchairtipovers.com
  • turningaccidents.com
  • wheelchairandpassengersecurement.com
  • crossingaccidents.com
  • transalt.com

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