After the Arrests of 6 Bus Drivers, MTA Asks for 'Fairness'

A new city law intended to reduce pedestrian deaths had already started a fight between safe streets advocates and the union that represents local bus drivers. On Monday, the MTA itself got into the fray when a top official said he was concerned about how the law was being enforced.

Last year, on the heels of Mayor Bill de Blasio's Vision Zero initiative, the City Council passed a law making it a criminal offense to injure or kill a pedestrian or cyclist who has the right of way in a crosswalk.

The so-called 'Right of Way' law had broad support in part because it seemed so obvious: why wouldn't running someone over in a crosswalk be a criminal offense? (Previously, it was just a traffic violation.)

But six months into the new law, six MTA bus drivers have been arrested for failing to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. That's one-third of the total number of arrests under the law, according to the New York Daily News. Five of the incidents involving bus drivers results in fatalities, one an injury.

At a meeting of the transit committee of the MTA's board, the agency's top bus official did not overtly criticize the arrests but said he wants "fairness."

Responding to a question by a board member, Darryl Irick, the MTA's vice president for bus operations, said: "While we do support the efforts and the goals of Vision Zero, we would prefer not that our operators would be arrested. Because we do everything that we can to make them successful. And we have a rigorous program. When an incident does take place, our bus operators are trained, they're given support — and they're also held accountable.”

Next, MTA board member Allen Cappelli, who had asked the question, said he wanted more information, at which point his fellow MTA board member, Fernando Ferrer, broke in. 

“Can we arrange for this offline?” asked Ferrer, the chairman of the transit committee.

But another board member, Charles Moerdler, had a follow-up question.

“If I understand this correctly," he asked, "it is city policy that allows the arrest of a driver of a passenger vehicle under certain circumstances when he hits a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Am I correct in that understanding?”

“That’s our understanding,” said Irick, “under certain circumstances.”

“Why should a bus driver be treated any differently?” Moerdler asked.

“Well, what I would say is this,” said Irick. “We're not extremely happy about that. The one thing that we're asking for is fairness. And quite frankly at this point in time, I couldn't speak any further about that, I mean I think it’s a discussion that we have to have offline.”

Then, Ferrer adjourned the Transit Committee meeting. When several journalists objected to an MTA's spokesman over the offline nature of that conversation, the spokesman said reporters could bring it up after the full board meeting on Wednesday.

But Moerdler's question — and Irick's response — lays bare the fundamental conflict at the core of the new law: exactly who does it apply to? 

The advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, which is strongly in favor of the measure, said in a recent memo: "Strengthening that law for all drivers, not diluting it, is the commonsense approach to make our streets safer for all of us. Professional drivers should, at a minimum, be held to the same standard as other drivers."

But TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen said the law criminalizes something that is, at its essence, an accident.

"This law was meant to curb reckless driving and prevent drivers from fleeing the scene of an accident," he wrote in a letter to City Council members last week. "Within the past few months, however, the law has been interpreted to justify automatic arrests of on-duty bus operators involved in traffic incidents."

Samuelsen was writing in support of  legislation introduced by Daneek Miller, a city councilman from Queens, which would amend the law to carve out an exemption for bus drivers. 

"The ‘failure to yield’ law is being misused to usurp the standard investigative process that is both more thorough and provides for fairer protocol," Miller told WNYC in a statement. "They are now subject to a double-standard involving an unprecedented level of scrutiny involving their livelihoods, which is a sanction that private drivers do not endure. Bus operators should not be automatically charged to bear full responsibility for complex accidents that may have multiple variables involved and require professional investigations. These are tragedies that we must work to prevent, not crimes.”

But the de Blasio administration stands squarely behind the law.

“The new Failure to Yield law is a vital tool in our efforts to protect pedestrians and make our streets safer," spokesman Wiley Norvell said. "We will work with our partners at the MTA and push for the training and support drivers need to do their jobs safely, and we are looking closely at changes we can make on our streets to prevent crashes between buses and pedestrians.”