Had an accident

I had just picked up a bus full of Elementary kids, and was making a left turn from Fuller Road onto Causey ave.  The kids were being their wild little selves – my god, are they EVER quiet?  That turn is right in front of a Clackamas County fire station.  There was a car waiting to make a left from Causey onto Fuller going south, and he/she was WAY over the stop line, so I was looking at my turn and figuring out how far I’d have to swing around him/her to avoid crushing the car with the tail swing of my bus.

The bus was very loud, with kids doing whatever they do – I’ve gotten used to it, but it is very distracting…as I started making my left turn, being careful to go out far enough not to tag the other car, an Oldsmobile came out of nowhere at a much higher speed than the 30 mph limit there and he nearly avoided my bus, but clipped it with his driver side mirror.

I immeadiately set my parking brake (in the middle of the road) and turned on my flashers.  I pulled out my Nextel radio and called dispatch, while yelling at the bedlam on my bus.  I grabbed the accident package from the bulkhead above the driver’s seat, and left the bus to eyeball the other car; a firetruck appeared behind me, and I went and talked to them.  They told me to clear the road, using their driveway to pull into.  The other driver also pulled into that driveway.  He was on his cell phone the whole time.

Meanwhile, my bus is complete bedlam.  Aboslute, complete bedlam.  I went back abord, checking for injuries and found none but scared, excited kids.  The noise was completely deafening; I had to get off to even hear the Dispatcher on the radio.  The school Principal showed up and got onboard to help manage the kids while I exchanged info with the other driver.  As per instructions, that is all I did – there was no arguing, no blaming, no hard words

No one was apparently hurt in either vehicle, but I am supposed to get names and seats of all abord my bus, now almost impossible because kids moved and crowded to the windows on the side towards the other driver’s car or just moved.  Maximal confusion reigned aboard the bus.  Damn kids.

Dispatch told me to wait for another bus to show up and for me to load my kids on it to take them home (and all of them live in walking distance too).  They told me to forget about my shuttle run and to drop off the Elementary kids and go directly to "my" high school and take my kids home.

They had brought me one of the new buses, which I am near completely unfamiliar with – it is a school bus though, so it wasn’t hard to figure out the important stuff, like how to turn on the student load lights and how to open and close the door, so no real problem.  I’d already had those.

I had to talk to several parents and reasured them that no kids were hurt.  I then went to my high school and picked up my kids there, some of whom bitched loudly that I was late.  (my heart bled) I dropped them off at their various stops and then had to figure out how to park this bus in it’s slot in the lot, also an unfamiliar exercise.  I did it in two trys and didn’t hit anything, then had to go to the Driver’s room and begin filling out the paperwork.  After I took the piss that had been waiting since the Elementary School.

It was over 11 hours for me away from home today; many driver’s were not there today, and I was given a mid-day run to three schools I had never been to before – the morning ended up being 6 hours, not the usual 2 and three quarters.  It worked out to be a nine and a half hour plus day, more than 11 hours away from home.  I got a self-guided tour of the west side of the district out of it, four more hours on the clock, and got to practise filling out yet another accident report.

I have driven nearly 700,000 miles in my life; I’ve had to fill out more accident reports in the last year than in the 28 years before this job.  I have driven way more than 35,000 miles for the newspapers in the past four years, and have never had an accident with them.  I drove tens of thousands of kilometers in Japan, on the other side of the raod, through most of that country, and never had an accident.  If I am not careful, this school bus driving will dent my confidence as a driver.

I know I should eat something, but I’ll have to go out to do so – I don’t have much food here right now.  I really want to get some good bourbon; I might or might not.  It may be a bad idea, and the liquor store closes in 40 minutes.

It’s been a long day already.  Maybe I’ll WALK  to the liqour store.  I haven’t decided.  It was a very good day up until I got the Elementary kids aboard my bus.  It’s only Thursday, and there are kids to pick up and drop off tomorrow, newspapers to pick up and deliver Saturday and Sunday, and more kids to transport Monday and all of next week, and three weeks to go until a day off.

This is, I think, the hard part.

*****