A recent follow up Letter to PennDOT regarding some transportation safety concerns

Thank you M.,

As I relayed earlier, I'm primarily curious for now about how transportation businesses in general handle their red-flag info gleaned from the newfangled data recorders. Having myself, a strong background driving trucks, taxis and limos, I can understand how complicated and hectic managing ever-mobile vehicles, while trying to juggle noisy dispatching calls often becomes. And this bustling busyness is a likely contributor of why red-flagged reckless driving is suspected of being overlooked. Who has time for that, if they're always short-staffed, as one driver with five years experience told me they always are?

I wonder if transportation companies and business's even budget one hour per month to check in or follow up on this sort of safety concern? If not, or rather, if so; then perhaps the season now is ripe for some of them to re-prioritize their allotted time for specific safety area focuses like this / these. 

Some places already have safety-prevention managers who are responsible for overseeing these crucial areas. I imagine that you M., and / or your PennDOT work-colleagues know of some of these people. Safety managers who are located, may have some of these same concerns. I encourage you to see if these experts already have broad ideas to expound upon and solutions to suggest, in what ways would be most viable to investigate and improve Commercial reckless-driving accountability.

Thank you,

& Best regards
JB

Let's be certain to utilize the futuristic safety tools we already have

1st working draft

Dear Editor,



I have been living in Central Pennsylvania for two years now, after relocating here from Idaho.  Out West, I worked driving large trucks for 20 years, and also focused on aircraft safety at a busy Airline for six. In addition, I’ve been a frequent newspaper opinion contributor, sometimes writing with a strong emphasis on highway safety issues. 



Now, as a disabled person, I’ve been working at a Work Skills Program since 2018, and am grateful for this type of productive work. From my house, I catch the bus to and from work most days and have made some noteworthy observations along the way.  



The majority of my fellow bus passengers are also disabled and some don’t have much of a voice there, since their guardians or advocates are seldom aboard. I have noted some safety concerns, which fellow work colleagues rarely address (or perhaps simply don’t notice,) so I try to speak up for them and their equal rights for harmless environments. 


A top concern is this:  

One spring afternoon in 2018, while riding aboard a nearly-loaded public 12-passenger bus, the driver hit a long valley straightaway and sped up. Soon, on this undivided two-lane she started exceeding 80 mph in a posted 55 zone, and continued this rate steadily over our next 5 to 6 miles. I wish that my camera then would have been of enough high quality to zoom in to show this clearly. 

 Mobile Logic Unit assembly

Months later I experienced an interesting synchronicity when work management trained me for a new task of assembling “Mobile Logic Units” for bus fleets. When I asked our bus drivers about some of the inner workings of these black-box-like devices, they told me that these recorders transpose and save tremendous amounts of data. For instance, in areas where motorists exceed speed limits, the variegated maps are programmed to mark these spots, and indicate them with red flags.


I’m curious though if bus managers actually address any of these warnings about bending or breaking speed laws. Because by many standards operating a commercial vehicle at 25 mph over the posted limit is consider reckless driving – and with a bus full of nearly voiceless disabled people to boot! 


Coupled with previous bus experiences, my intuition niggles at me rigorously that perhaps they do not. And if PennDOT has authority to conduct audits for such vital bus information, I suggest this is something they consider investigating deeper, if they do not already do so. After all, why would our tremendous public bus services invest in expensive cutting-edge safety features if the management sometimes overlooks these, or perhaps willfully ignores them?



Indeed, endangering already disabled passengers like my work colleagues should be held as an uppermost consideration to be avoided at all costs. 

Thank you,
JB

This is a copy of the letter I sent out to various parties, when the first part of this cell phone proposal came around in 2004. (click to enlarge)

Immediately after writing this, I realized that I had forgotten that someone also lost their life around Pole Creek several years before, when a tree was felled on top of them. Sometimes I've expressed to friends that I think this valley has selective amnesia, when it comes to common sense safety protocols. Locking your doors for a few weeks after somebody you know get's burglarized and things like that.

For a long while, my mindset grew even stronger towards this orientation of safety via better phone service. After all, the tower is proposed in a proximity where backcountry sportspersons and avalanches often intersect. Then about two weeks ago, I was stung reading about how bees are not finding their way back to hives and that the likely culprit is our cell phone signals emanating on and near the same essential wavelengths, which bees use to navigate. Beekeepers are calling for an investigation. One of the best stories about this involves local woman Heidi Albrecht and was written by Dana Dugan: http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005115131

An important point is made in Heidi's "Save the Honeybee" Campaign story, when Dana quotes Einstein, "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left," he said. "No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

Equally important to those who confidently believe that they will survive a plague of monumental proportions like this -there won't be any more of that staple food we know as beer!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~There needs to be an investigation!

Supposedly, when naval vessels wrongly warshiped the earth with an overabundance of inter-fearing sonar, many whales lengthened their songs in order to adapt! Other channels reveal different takes on this . Some folks strongly believe that many whales mourn our good earth and are choosing to beach themselves on purpose.

Back to the latest buzz on the bees: Should we be hoping that the much needed bees can adapt to our interference waves as well as some of the whales have? Perhaps, there should be an investigation of some sort. With this most recent revelation of "Colony Collapse Disorder", it's difficult to determine what the best option is. Improved cell phone reception, or improved bee navigation. But, here's my two cents and I hope the infomation helps in some way.