TriMet MAX and TriMet Bus collide downtown
I’m reading this morning’s feeds and see a story that a TriMet bus and MAX collided downtown at SW 3rd and Yamhill last night. I almost can’t believe this, but then again, after seeing how TriMet drivers actually drive downtown, I wonder why this didn’t happen sooner. I have almost been run over a few times by buses running red lights or turning a corner on a green without slowing for peds. Most of the time, I see the driver go from a complete stop to run a red light in 5′. It seems the law doesn’t apply to them.
The article in the Trib implies that they don’t know who is at fault. Well, I think the train always has right of way, especially downtown. Granted, there could have been a signage or traffic light glitch, but that is unlikely. Hopefully, no one was badly hurt. The train was derailed and service was down for a couple of hours.
I wonder if the stats for the SW 4th avenue red light cam are public record. If a public vehicle gets a ticket, can we find out about it? I wonder how many buses get snapped for running red lights.
Related posts:
Yeah, it was crazy. I have a few photos on my phone that I’ll upload to my flickr account later today. Thankfully I wasn’t on the bus or the MAX at the time, but there was quite a wait for the bus over on 3rd. It amazes me how few people knew how to get where they needed to go via bus - I pointed at least 5 people in the right direction to get a bus to Rose Quarter…
I was on the train - I think I was on the second car. We just felt kind of a bump and everybody figured that we just scraped the side of a car that had parked too far out or something. When we got off the train, we saw that the Max had derailed and had crushed the side of the bus - around the spot where the back door is.
It didn’t seem like the train was affected much, and I heard that there were only two passengers on the bus. If it had been full, there would have been a lot more injuries.
Here are the pictures I took, uploaded to my flickr account:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/montag2k/tags/crash/
Cheers,
Jake
From what I saw on tv the other night "just arm chair quarter backing here" it looked like the bus was driving in front of max when max hit the bus. But tri-mess won’t say a word for like the next six months then they will say some thing like "oh nothing happened, no harm no foul."
Oh BTW you were wondering "if the stats for the SW 4th avenue red light cam are public record" I’ll bet there not my understanding is that billy bob owns the cameras and processes the "film" and the city leases them from billy bob and I think that if a company rig "power,plumbing,HAVAC what have you runs one they don’t get the tickets ie to hard to track down the driver.
"Billy Bob = company name I don’t know"
Tri Met: Unsafe at any speed.
Does anyone know how many people that trimet or max have killed? Or hit? I find it a bit crazy how many times you here about someone being killed by them! If any other company had that many "accedents" and deaths they would be shut down and insurance taken away! But you don’t hear that on the news. I don’t know why the buses get away with all of this. I’m afraid to even be near a bus on the road!