Run for Your Life It's Metrobus!

Metrobus continued terrorizing DC citizens yesterday by mowing down two women who were crossing the street within the crosswalk at a green light in the Penn Quarter. The two women died, only a month after a woman was killed by a Metrobus on 16th St and six months after one died in Friendship Heights.

Never fear, Metro has a plan: to install strobe lights on buses.

Metro plans to install strobe lights on 100 buses that operate in the District to help alert pedestrians to their presence, officials said. The special warning lights, which will be affixed to the front of the buses, are scheduled to be installed in the next 60 days.

Metro also says they will need more money for driver training, though most normal citizens learn to avoid running down pedestrians as part of regular driver education, or something called common sense and decency.

I have a hunch that these killer drivers have a long list of warnings prior to the deadly incidents but that Metro was unable to fire them because of their union contracts. The bus driver in my neighborhood is a psycho who runs red lights, slams on the brakes so hard that elderly women take flight through the aisle and actually laughs when she refuses to open the door for people waiting at the bus stop and then zooms away, still laughing, while the desperate passengers try to run to the next stop. Sometimes she doesn't let them in then either. I am sure that scads of people have reported her but Metro has done nothing. Therefore I am not hopeful that additional (taxpayer-financed) driver education will be the answer to cleaning up shop at Metrobus and improving passenger and pedestrian safety.

At least this tragedy has distracted Phil Graham from the Smarta Club tragedy, which was leading him to destroy DC nightlife once and for all. I would rather have Graham busy policing Metro versus nightlife and liquor licenses.