DDOT Bus Strikes, Kills Detroit Woman Outside Government Headquarters

by wanyakazi US Editorial Staff | Detroit MI 10:45AM

Today, at Griswold and Congress, at around 8AM, a DDOT bus struck and ran over an older woman with a disability right outside of the Guardian Building, home to the Wayne County Commissioners and Executive, Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC), and a slew of other government administrative officers, including those which focus on transportation.

This morning, a DDOT bus struck and ran over, and killed, in a gruesome fashion, an older woman with a disability.

Witnesses told us they heard her screaming for 10 to 15 minutes before she died. One witness told our editorial board that they saw her guts laying in the street. The police arrived nearly immediately and her body was covered with a sheet. The horrors were whispered amongst the witnesses standing around, behind the yellow tape and from behind the windows of the surrounding towers.

One of our editors spoke recently with a DDOT driver about the pressures of the job and he told us that the job is defined by an “overworked and underpaid” workforce of drivers, many of whom rely on public transportation themselves, coming from all over to try to make a decent wage doing decent work.

One driver told us there was a meeting between the union– Local 26 Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU)– and the Mayor’s administration. Promises were made to give drivers a raise and to hire more drivers and thus cut the routes assigned and the time spent driving. All of this was to be done with Federal ARPA monies. During subsequent meetings, the allocated dollar amount for this decreased, repeatedly, they were notified of decreases in the budget allocation.

Eventually the Bus operators union learned the money had been spent. New drivers were hired with whatever little bit remained, but at the same pitiful wages and with hasty training to fill an increasing number of bus driver vacancies.

During a recent, documented ride by our editorial staff, riders told our reporters that the drivers were driving too fast, driving more recklessly, stopping in random places to use the restroom, and stopping to get food. All of these presented concerns for the riders in terms of their feeling of safety.

When we spoke with drivers, they replied to the obvious effect that all of these instances are examples of drivers having to improvise on the job to meet their basic health and safety needs. Assigned more routes, with less break time, assigned to buses that are not functional at the start of their shift, falling behind schedule and feeling pressure to make up time, drivers have to deprioritize safe driving just to do their jobs.

The situation is fairly clear: austerity in city government is killing Detroiters. Drivers and riders are frequently pitted against each other by DDOT officials and by the Mayor’s Administration, but the riders and the drivers are both working class groups either at work or going to work in a bus that has had far too few dollars invested into it. DDOT riders and drivers are not a high priority for the Mayor and his administration in Detroit.

DDOT officials and the Mayor’s Administration try to imply that they ride the bus at community meetings, but in fact, we are not fooled. None of us who organize for better transit for ourselves and our families ever see them on the bus. We know DDOT officials personally and by name; we have socialized with them; we know what kind of cars they drive and we know that their class of bureaucrats look down on public transportation and upon those who use it.

Ultimately, we understand that plans to hire more drivers at a better rate is a propaganda move to calm the unrest among the membership of Local 26 – ATU without intention to follow through. The bait-and-switch is a classic move for the politicians who are hellbent on privatizing, cutting spending on human services, and giving tax breaks and incentives to billionaires.

But alas, the cost comes down to us. We wait for the bus in the bitter cold, in the pouring rain, in the sweltering heat, and we take out our frustrations on the bus drivers who represent the only aspect of the system which is within reach, who we feel we can hold directly accountable. But the bus driver is not our enemy as riders.

The driver is pressed to drive more routes in shaky and poorly maintained buses and to do so for little money after fighting to get to work and oftentimes can only express their very valid frustration by slighting riders, passing them up, belittling them. They must know that the rider is not their enemy.

The vast majority of riders and drivers are polite, well-meaning, full of ambition and responsibility. The vast majority of riders and drivers are the absolute best of Detroit. And the rest are equally entitled to human rights, to human dignity, safety, transportation, honest political representation, and good governance. All of us are entitled to the full fruits of the taxation which we all pay.

We deserve timely and clean and safe bus service in Detroit. We pay for it with every purchase we make at the store, with every tax and fee, we pay for good bus service and it is owed to us.

It is time for the Mayor and the Detroit Department of Transportation to give us what we are owed.

This morning, a DDOT bus struck and ran over, and killed, in a gruesome fashion, an older woman with a disability and her blood is on the hands of the City of Detroit, and our hearts are with her family, with the riders who witnessed this, and with the driver who undoubtedly feels terrible in the wake of this accident.

Our hearts are hardened against the politics of austerity which are killing us and the politicians who promote it.

Amandla!

This article is written by the Wanyakazi Editorial Staff after months of conversation with bus drivers as members of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 26 and bus riders. The identity of all of these sources have been withheld for the safety and professional wellbeing of these community members and workers amid a climate of retaliation and reprisal by members of the Mayor of Detroit’s Administration and staff members of aligned persons on Detroit’s City Council. Conversations were conducted from the months of February to June and their documentations are alluded to here in response to the emergent news of the killing of a woman by a DDOT Bus.

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