It was a horrible crash leaving one car all but unrecognizable, but amazingly no one died and the only injuries were relatively minor.
The Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) paratransit bus was empty except for the driver. As can be seen from the video, there were no brake light as the bus slammed into the stalled row of cars. The driver never even slowed down.
But look at this video from the driver-cam...
Even more astonishing is that the driver appears not to be at all distracted. There is no cell phone and both hands are on the wheel. His eyes seem never to leave the road and even after the collision his expression hardly changes. This is an experienced driver with 12 years operating these buses. The fellow is now without a job and is being roundly vilified.
Perhaps the reactions are justified, but there is something about this that make me uncomfortable. I can't understand how he could not see the stopped traffic unless something else was going on.
More information will be forthcoming, I'm sure.
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That is just flat strange... Like he was "not there"... just brain dead!
Exactly. This make me suspect some kind of medical problem, but so far nothing reported.
I wonder if this is something like the 'micro sleep' problem facing railroad and subway engineers?
Good possibility. There was a report I read on a German study on pilot fatigue just a year or so ago, and something else in the Christian Science Monitor or Wall Street Journal only a few month ago comparing pilots and truck drivers suffering from similar fatigue.
They are suffering, according to the study, due to grueling schedules and insufficient rest. This fellow was not a DART employee. He worked for a contractor. Perhaps he was suffering from the same problem as the pilots.
Regardless, he lost his job and I have to wonder if that was a justifiable action.
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