So picture a low wage driver driving at night when most people naturally tend to fall asleep, usually Greyhound buses are speeding on the highway, and all the way from LA to SAC in the rain and irresponsible cut-off drivers, oh and you paxs don't have to wear a seatbelt over 40-50mph.
The paxs want the heat on and that, from personal and professional experience, really makes bus drivers sleepy.
Plus you can not wear head phones and listen to music to stay awake. Some buses don't even have built-in coffee cup holders. Stupid.
So taking a night bus long distance is a considerable risk.
Did the driver have full benefits and matching 401k or was he working two jobs driving, just to pay the out of control rent increases in California?
As a bus driver since 1976, I tried driving a night bus charter from Reno to Boise.
Headlights coming high head-on hurt your eyes. The lane on 2 lane "highways" in Nevada and Idaho are too narrow for big wide trucks and buses, so you either hit the noisy tire bots-dots on Your side of the double yellow or and the noisy gravel on the shoulder. Where are safer Federal standards !?
Crazy stupid.
As a professional bus truck limo driver, since 1976, what I want to feel safer on highways in fast heavy crowded buses is a driver monitor, so if the truck or bus driver starts to fall asleep , it is electronically recorded and sent to his office and the driver is small shocked awake. I use to drive the women overnight from SJ to indian gambling near Solvang, getting back in San Jose in the early morning. Some nights there were 6 full buses of gambling women. We drivers tried to sleep in a no a/c tiny single dirt cheap motel bedroom, but in the bus's warm heat, dark sky drive back North I often caught myself falling asleep as I crossed the right shoulder and started to hit the dirt and gravel and drive off the 101N highway !. Scared the hell out of me! Had to refuse those runs finally. I am Definitely diurnal, and must sleep at night. Must. Though one company ordered me to drive from SF to LA and back to SF , even tho that is way over legal hours,14 at the time. Governor Grey Davis and Sacramento have made it 16hrs now. Totally irresponsible !! And the annual CHP bus inspections are a "show" joke that no one in the industry fears or respects, as that is what the politicians want.
Pilots for decades have refused to be video monitored.
Their union is against it.
Now is the time to stop the sham and get serious about truck bus and commercial airplane driver video monitoring. Some companies are doing it for 911 security reasons with bus locator small black modules on the dash and front-rear cameras on the front windshield. The Feds offered to pay for all of it.
No excuses.
When I was a kid we could drive 101 to LA or fly out of sj in the narrowest commercial jet 1-1 seating or take the luxury overnight sleeper car train from sf/sj -la. Amtrak is a disaster on rented late waiting for freight trains bus and train to LA. I don't want to take a bus. Think of all the cars we could remove from the 101 and planes from the sky if we brought back the luxury trains of the 50s. Of course the politicans will say "it is impossible and too expensive" . Yet a train company, Southern Pacific , ran wonderful luxury stainless steel trains up and down the coast. Western Europe does it so well, inspite of crazy Thatcher selling off public assets and taxing rich less and voting pole tax. California , even after spending over $6B on the tiny Oakland Bay Bridge, should be able to find the visionary vs lazy leaders !!
Tourist would fill the trains.
The train right of way should be a public asset after what the railroad companies overcharged the usa to build the transcontinental !! Corrupt companies and their corrupt politicians.
