James Blain 0:00

So we're making a left turn. We've somehow gone off. He wasn't,

Ken Lucci 0:07

Oh,

James Blain 0:07

oh God. What are you doing, man?

John Tyreman 0:31

Alright everyone, welcome to the Ground Transportation Podcast. My name is John Tieman. I am actually the producer. I am joined, as always by James Blaine from PAX Training and Kenneth Lucci from Driving Transactions. Gentlemen, how are we doing today?

James Blain 0:46

Good.

Ken Lucci 0:46

Can't complain. I'm in a great atmosphere. You can tell I'm working from home and this is the highlight of my weekend. It's been a long one.

John Tyreman 0:56

It has been, uh, a long week and it's snowing outside, right? Can you get yourself a snow day?

Ken Lucci 1:01

Yep. Little bit of snow

John Tyreman 1:02

Alright, well, today we are going to do, um, another one of our dash cam breakdown episodes. We've done a couple in the past and they've, uh, they've been a hit on social media, some of the clips that we've been putting out there. so that's what's on the docket today. Um, we've got four categories that we'll be going through.

James Blain 1:22

Ooh, jeopardy style.

John Tyreman 1:24

Jeopardy style. Exactly. so, the way that this is gonna work is I'm gonna tee up these clips and then I'm gonna ask each of you a specific question about these clips and then how would you, I want to get your reaction and then, we can talk about a topic that's related to ground transportation operators. Does that sound good?

Ken Lucci 1:45

Sure.

John Tyreman 1:46

All right, let's do it.

Ken Lucci 1:47

Just so the audience knows, we never get advanced looks at any of these clips, so this is the real reaction.

James Blain 1:54

Yeah, this is no movie magic. We literally are, are seeing him for the first time and we're going straight overseas. We're already in Europe. All right, let's go.

John Tyreman 2:02

We're gonna jump across the pond real quick.

James Blain 2:05

What is this England?

John Tyreman 2:07

this, uh, it, it seems like that someplace over in Europe, James, these clips are for you. So I'm gonna share two videos of motor coach drivers breaking basic rules of the road.

James Blain 2:18

Dude, this guy looks like he's already over the curb, man.

John Tyreman 2:20

James, my question to you is, what policies or systems could have prevented this from happening? So let's dive in.

Screenshare 2:30

School buses are there to keep the kids safe, right? Yeah. Well that's better than it being like a cruise

James Blain 2:39

ah,

Screenshare 2:40

doing. My

James Blain 2:41

oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh

Screenshare 2:45

I.

James Blain 2:47

my God.

Screenshare 2:48

What

James Blain 2:49

Oh, the kids are all still there. Is this AI or is this real?

John Tyreman 2:52

No, this is, this is real. This

James Blain 2:54

oh my gosh, that was, that was awful. Like this guy cut. The, so for, for those of you that aren't watching, it looks like we're, we're in, like the dash cam isn't in the bus. Right. And that was, it looked like a city bus. So I've got like some kind of yellow hooded car or bus or whatever that we're, we're looking out on the dash cam and there's, there's basically a t in the road. We're, we're driving like towards the actual tee and this bus comes and this guy starts his turn stupid early. Like he starts his turn on this bus way early, but there's a bunch of kids walking home from school

Ken Lucci 3:32

On the sidewalk.

James Blain 3:34

on the sidewalk. And so this guy, literally, I'm not talking

John Tyreman 3:38

could have straightened out there.

James Blain 3:39

well, not only could he have straightened out, this guy doesn't. So, alright. Couple things. So when you're turning a motor coach, you've got, you know, two different ways you can turn. You've got, you, you've got the one that nobody wants, right? Where you kind of go out the wrong way and then come back over. Ideally, what you're doing is you're going past the turning point, and then you're doing a hard turn in that direction and you're bringing it over. This guy, like, he's like, Yolo man, I'm just gonna yee this thing. So he gets to the edge of the turn and his front tires are basically following the curb, and then he cuts even harder. His front tires are literally go up onto the curb. Now he's riding the curb a hundred percent. What I see here is I see someone trying to turn a bus, like, and, and I, I said we were in the UK earlier. This guy is literally trying to turn this bus like it's a mini Cooper, and as a result he's way over. And instead of, like you said, John, like if he would've tried to straighten out, but this to me looks like a hundred percent. This guy has no understanding of reference points. How in the world, like, look at, look at that man. He could have gone, he could have gone straight. He could have actually tried to, he had already blown it and the whole thing was he turned way too early. Honestly, this one, like if, if I went to this company, my first question is, how much time do you guys spend in parking lots doing range training? Teaching them the reference points on the bus, because when you're driving a bus, a big thing is reference points. Knowing, okay, I know when the turn gets to this part of my bus, or I see it in this part of my mirror, or I get to this area, like I can feel it. The other thing is if that mirror is set up right, I can see my rear tires. One, what in the world is this guy doing, getting his front tires over the curb? But two, like if I'm making a turn in a bus, I'm watching my rear tires to make sure that I, 'cause you can get those rear tires to follow the curve. Your front tires have gotta be way out for, 'cause he off tracking that, that to me, someone's gotta take that guy off the road.

Ken Lucci 5:53

yeah. The other piece of the puzzle is no hazard lights. In other words, he's coming to, as you said, it's a, it's a t and, and, and there are cars on the, in the opposite lane, so he couldn't have overcompensated use of the opposite lane. But why not hazard lights? And at least wait for that one car in the opposite lane to get outta the way, because to your point, this orange vehicle, this dash cam that we're looking at was purposely holding back, giving him room.

James Blain 6:28

Right. And the other thing is I will, so I mentioned UK in the beginning and I, I didn't know why. It just instantly popped UK for me and it just settled in. We are definitely in England 'cause he's on the wrong side of the road and everybody's on the wrong side of the road and it doesn't look like any of the text is flipped or mirrored. So we're definitely in the uk So obviously I don't drive bus in uk. I, I don't deal with that there, but I'm with you Ken. I don't know that, you know, typically what you're gonna wanna do in this scenario is you would wanna wait because. As you can tell, you've got a school bus, right? That's what this looks like. It's dash cam footage from a school bus. If he would've pa, if he would've pulled forward enough to let everybody know he is turning that school bus driver, man, you know, birds of a feather flock together, we know our turner radiuses. This school bus driver would've given him the room to correctly make the turn. And if you look, even when that, even when that blue bus moves, dude's like, what are you doing? Because he is given him the room to try and correct it. And I, dude, you see it all the time. I mean, if you're riding on a vehicle with a driver that knows what he's doing, a lot of times they're gonna wait it out and they're purposely get a plan. They're routes to not have tight turns like that.

Ken Lucci 7:41

Yeah. And he's got the size. He's got the size. So everybody in back of him is gonna have to wait. Alright. What's the, what's the next

James Blain 7:49

grief.

John Tyreman 7:49

All right, so, uh, James, you grew up in California, right?

James Blain 7:53

I did, I spent some time in California. I love me, my in and out, right? Big

Ken Lucci 7:57

boy? That, that, that explains a lot.

James Blain 8:00

Yeah.

John Tyreman 8:00

Are you, familiar with the, uh, the California role?

James Blain 8:04

Oh geez. Here we go. Yeah, let's see

John Tyreman 8:07

Okay, let's check this out.

James Blain 8:09

I, I, now, now by California roll, I assume you mean the California stop, right? We just roll through. There's, you know, I, look, look, I will tell you, when I was, I was in California recently and I was in a rental car driving, and I, I get nervous as hell. Every time I pull up to a stop sign, I am just glued to the rear mirror because failure to California roll a couple times has almost gotten me rear-ended. Like it is a real problem out there.

John Tyreman 9:41

Well, let's, uh, let's check out this video. And James, you, uh, let the audience know what policies or systems or training could have prevented this from happening.

James Blain 9:50

It's always training.

Screenshare 9:54

Why.

James Blain 9:55

All right, so we're on a highway. Oh, dude.

Ken Lucci 9:58

Oh, tell.

James Blain 10:02

All right. All right. So it looks like we're rolling down a highway. this probably isn't a real highway. This is probably like a 55 mile an hour, and there's no on ramps. There's literally just turn ons. And this charter bls, right, full size 45 foot motor coach just pulls right out in front. But I don't mean like, you know, to a certain extent you're in a bus. You don't have a lot of choice. This guy pulls out to where there's maybe three car lengths between him and this SUV coming up. On top of that, he's going, in this case, I think he actually, and it's hard to tell, I can't see, and it's hard to coach, but he goes out into the fast lane. So he basically cuts off the slow lane, the fast lane. What's sad is there's no traffic here. It's not like it's rush hour. It's not like it's traffic. This is an impatient motor coach driver that just eets his bus out there and cuts everyone off. Look, I, here's the thing, when you're driving a coach, you can't just gun it. Like for anybody that hasn't driven a motor coach on here, like, don't get me wrong. You put the pedal down, it'll move, but they basically are never going to be able to quickly pull out and accelerate once

Ken Lucci 11:17

like moving, like

James Blain 11:19

No. Yeah. You, yeah, and, and it, I mean, I'll tell you what, I've driven school buses. School buses are worse, man. You put the pedal down and it's got two speeds, stopped it slow. Some of the newer coaches, they've got a little bit of get up and go, they'll move. But you just, it's not like an SUV or a sedan where you can pull out and accelerate. And I'll tell you what, if I was watching this dash cam footage and it was an SUV or sedan, I'd still be chirping the driver. I'd still be going, what are you doing? Why are you pulling out? Because even in a vehicle that can accelerate, he's basically cutting them off.

Ken Lucci 11:52

So what do you do in this case? What do you do if

James Blain 11:55

you wait,

Ken Lucci 11:56

if, yeah. But what do you do if you are the, the, if you are the owner of that motor coach company with this information, what do you try to do? Because it's somebody else's dash cam.

James Blain 12:07

right, so, so a couple things. So you made a really good point and, and I'll point this out. We are in the dash cam of the driver in the fast lane, right? So this is not our dash cam footage. A lot of this is training your drivers on patients and waiting it out. Look, I get that you might be in a hurry. I get you've got a schedule. I get people have got a place to be. The bigger the vehicle, the more patient you have to be. And this comes up with following distance. Like when you're driving a bus, when you're driving a larger vehicle, you're gonna leave a bigger following distance and people are gonna cut in front of you. all the time just take that space and take that space and jump in and jump in. And one of the hardest and most annoying things there is you gotta reopen that gap and you gotta reopen that gap. And in traffic, you know, there's this desire to really close that gap. And the biggest thing there is you have gotta have a bubble around your vehicle. And that means when you're pulling out in a case like this, you gotta make sure that the traffic is far enough back, that they're not gonna come on you. If you've got people in front of you, you've gotta make sure that as you speed up, you increase that following distance. as someone like, and I would also say this is also valuable lesson from far back, I gotta tell you. This guy that's in the fast lane. If he was one of my chauffeur, I wouldn't be super pleased with him either. 'cause if you watch, we're going down the middle of the lane, that bus pulls out, this guy just goes over onto the shoulder and goes around him, dude, you got, you got two pedals in the car. One speeds you up, one slows you down. I would say, Hey, if you see that bus falling out, the guy on the right, he actually had exactly what I would do. He's proactively stopping. He's keeping a big gap. And I'll tell you what I'm looking in my rear view. Once I know I'm good with the coach in front of me, that that's pulled out in front of me. I'm watching my rear view, I'm making sure no one's running up behind me. There's, there's a lot to be learned here because I, I think the only guy that really handled this appropriately is the guy that got cut off

Ken Lucci 14:08

The guy in the

James Blain 14:09

that was, yeah, the guy in the slow lane. If he's one of my drivers, he's proactively slowing down. I'm more happy with that guy because if that bus hits the guy in the fast lane and there's an accident. Dude, they can come to a stop. They can get out. I don't wanna be anywhere near that. So I think the, the guy that gets the kudos, in my opinion in this one is actually the guy in that SUV

Ken Lucci 14:31

Well, and to your point, to your point, the SUV that's going down the fast lane. In order to, to, he chose instead of slowing down, 'cause he had plenty of time, he chose to go on the shoulder. Okay. Whoever's the client in the backseat is literally texting, saying, oh my God, I'm gonna die.

James Blain 14:52

well.

Ken Lucci 14:52

It just wasn't the right move for the SUV driver either.

James Blain 14:57

No. Well, and let's make that, let's, let's take that even further. 'cause we saw our buddies over on the pond, right? Our buddy that was driving on the sidewalk right? Now, imagine if that that guy tries to go over on the shoulder. What if that bus doesn't straighten out? What if that bus decides he's going for the far lane? You are already on the shoulder. For those of you that weren't watching, he was going under an underpass. If that bus would've hit him, it would've pinned him against the concrete wall of the underpass. So now you are literally in a point where he would've gotten pinned on a wall. And by the way, I'm gonna tell you right now, we have no idea what the dash cam footage was, but there's nothing that a bus won't pin on a wall, including another bus. Like there was no reason for him to be on the shoulder like

Ken Lucci 15:40

no, and I wanna point out that this is all video that's published and public. We didn't create this video,

James Blain 15:47

They are not our customers.

Ken Lucci 15:49

don't want any certified letters from the owners of these motor coach companies saying that we're doing bad things because this stuff is already out in the public.

James Blain 15:57

Well, and I'll take that a step further. If you are the owner of this company, call me. I'll be happy to talk with you about how to fix it, and we'll help you get 'em doing the right thing.

Ken Lucci 16:07

Are you, are you saying that we should be doing, like, are you saying that this should be like an infomercial kind of thing?

James Blain 16:13

Well, I mean, I'm saying that I would love to go to England and have the trip to England to be able to coach him. No, I'm just kidding. Um, but no, I, there's opportunities

Ken Lucci 16:23

No, listen, everything is a teachable moment as long as you don't total the bus. As long as you don't total the bus.

James Blain 16:30

That is a teachable moment. Just not while he works for you.

Ken Lucci 16:33

Right. Okay. What else, John? What do?

John Tyreman 16:36

All right. So James, you were in your element with some of those, uh, training tips and

James Blain 16:41

Yeah. Now we're going cyberpunk. This is gonna be Ken's time,

John Tyreman 16:44

yeah. So now we're gonna shift a little bit more over into Ken's wheelhouse a little bit. And Ken, since we've explored the concept of autonomous livery in the past on this podcast, uh, let's talk autonomous coaches. So I'm gonna play a clip of some new autonomous buses. Then. If these autonomous buses, let's just say that they become more affordable than some of the gas powered engines, Does that lower the barrier of entry for chauffeur companies expanding into motor coach? So that's kind of the big question. Let's take a look at some of these videos and I would love for to hear what your thoughts on that.

Ken Lucci 17:21

I mean, unaccustomed, as I am speaking about autonomous vehicles, I.

James Blain 17:26

I. I, totally thought he was gonna say, what happens if they become sentient

Screenshare 17:30

the bin. The bin is, uh, this is a, we we're going to make this and it's gonna look like that. Now, can you imagine going down the streets and you see this coming toward you? That'll be sick.

James Blain 17:47

So I gotta point this out. So for those of you that aren't watching, this is Elon doing his, like his robo van thing that literally looks like it came straight out of iRobot. Like every time I see this, I just think of all the robots coming out and Will Smith

Screenshare 18:01

of up to 20 people at a time. So this is gonna, the ovn is what's gonna solve for high density. So if you, if you want to take a sports team somewhere, or, um, you're looking to, to really get to the cost of travel down to, I don't know, five, 10 cents a mile, then you can use the rewoven.

Ken Lucci 18:25

As opposed to the robo van.

James Blain 18:27

Rob, remember he is south, he's South African. Don't make fun of people for their accents.

John Tyreman 18:33

wanted to have Elon Musk on the podcast. Now we've got him on

James Blain 18:36

Yeah. Yeah.

Ken Lucci 18:37

You know, and, and it, you know, I don't understand why if he'll go on Rogan's podcast, what do I have to do? Do I have to fully shave my head in order to get you, come on?

James Blain 18:47

We will both shave our heads. If Elon Musk comes off

Ken Lucci 18:51

I don't understand. So the robo van, the robbin is, is, I've seen this a little bit, um, before. First of all, James, did you notice that the seating. Is cafe seating? Is that what we're calling that? Where there's, what did you say? What did you think? Eight or 10 seats on either side,

James Blain 19:10

Can we rewind it and look inside because, 'cause to me this looked like a, like my instant thought on this is, this looks like a sprinter van with the door in the middle in terms of space like this to me, looks like you took an executive seating sprinter van. You put the door in the middle, you flip the seats and it's actually, it's funny because the zoo that I tested in Las Vegas, it only had four. But it also had this opposed I, to me, I always think European train. 'cause when I was, when I was growing up in, in Spain, we had the trains the same way you face, so this to me is almost like, you know, train seating. But that's what five, I think it's five facing each

John Tyreman 19:53

He said it, it's seats 20.

Ken Lucci 19:55

Okay, so what? No, it, it, it's gotta be 10 on either side. And obviously, you know, the US regs are gonna be, might be a little bit different as far as egress around those seats, but what you see, what, what, what you are seeing here, I, I would share with you that there are probably. At least three or four other manufacturers that are doing the same kind of a concept in the, I'll just call it 12 to 20 passenger count. Uh, where do we, what are we gonna see this in the us? Absolutely. 100%. I think you'll first see them in closed campuses. There's no question in my mind. couple things. I think his egress here, and this may be a nitpick. But this vehicle is extremely low to the ground. So I think that the US version of the production version will probably be a little bit more like a step down of a sprinter to James' Point.

James Blain 20:55

Yeah.

Ken Lucci 20:56

but I, I would tell you that This is a real thing that's going to happen. Whether or not Tesla's the first one in the market is the only question in my mind. Um, there's a company called Bentler that we have a pretty intimate knowledge of that's making similar kind of units

James Blain 21:13

Is that fully autonomous? Ken, is that completely? Because I don't think this thing has a steering wheel, does it?

John Tyreman 21:19

Correct.

Ken Lucci 21:19

that's the, that's the biggest difference. the bentler in the US will start, I believe it will start with an attendant, but in most cases, especially on closed campuses and in, you know, very strict routing. I, I think it's just gonna be similar to a streetcar without a motorman. if I had to guess the timeframe. Close campus, I think they're gonna be here within three to five years.

James Blain 21:48

I could see that

Ken Lucci 21:49

as far as out on the road replacing public transit buses, you know, in many of the larger cities, I, I think that the stakeholders can't wait. They, it couldn't happen fast

James Blain 22:02

fast enough.

Ken Lucci 22:04

because you know, they've got two issues. One is the, the CO2 that belches out of the bus, and the second is most of the motor men. And, and the CDL transit drivers, a lot of them are getting close to retirement age.

James Blain 22:18

And let me throw something at you with that, Ken, because one of the things that has come up, and I heard it brought up at a motor coach conference, and I had a very, very good discussion with the, the gentleman that was talking about it, is whether or not we're gonna see safety drivers. Because a lot of the early autonomous testing, there was a steering wheel in the vehicle, there was safety drivers. But I can tell you when I did the zoo in Vegas, there's no steering wheel. They have an emergency button. What is your take? And and I, my, so my solid opinion on that was we've moved to the point where we already have stuff like a zoo that is on the road with no safety driver. I don't think they're going to, from a technology standpoint, try to go back. What is your opinion on that? What do you kind of see that being?

Ken Lucci 23:03

There's two things. One, I think the regulators are gonna have a lot to say about it because now you're exponentially increasing the risk of more human life, right? so Waymo and Zoox, and by the way, the new Waymo unit. Which is made by Zeke, not to be confused with Zeke. Uh, Zeke. ZEEK one. The Zeke one is a Chinese autonomous with man, we gotta figure out, is it, if it's cafe seating, did they used to call it tete seating? Whatever, whatever. but you are facing, right? So the Zeke, the Zeke is, is, uh, larger than the zoox. That unit is not built to have a person. So my feeling on it, not to be long-winded, but I am, my feeling on it, is that the larger the vehicle capacity, the probability is that they're gonna require a person to be on it. I'll throw it back to you, James. Do you think in our lifetime I'm 60, by the way, keep that in mind.

James Blain 25:19

Are we talking about mine or yours?

Ken Lucci 25:22

Make it yours. Make it yours. My question becomes, and do you think we're gonna see totally autonomous motor coaches in our lifetime? Your lifetime, not my lifetime.

James Blain 25:33

I think we will see fully autonomous motor coaches on fixed route shuttle routes very, very fast. if you're a charter company, it's different, right? Because, you know, if you're running a tour, if you're running a cross country charter, if you're doing things like that, that's gonna be a very different animal. But I can tell you right now where I fly a lot and when I fly, here in Kansas City, we have this great economy parking set up where I can literally, I, and, and I'm notorious for this, I park at the same very back of the lot every time. So I know exactly where I'm picking up the bus. I get on the bus, I go in, I get on it. But that bus runs a very, not completely predictable, but a very predictable, fixed route. It's gonna run the same line all the time. And so I think for something like that. Absolutely we will see it. I will tell you though, I think with the bus you get some interesting and different things. Like for example, buses kneel, right? And for those of you that aren't familiar, what a kneeling bus is, is when the front of the bus kinda lowers down so you can step in. If it's autonomous, all it's gonna take is for a bag to get crushed or someone to get hurt. I mean, there's a lot of things that can go wrong, but I think on those fixed routes, 100% we're gonna see that because it's gonna be able to deal with that tours and whatnot. I don't know. But the other thing that I think we need to bring up here, Ken, and I think you've brought it up before, people think that autonomous and electric are the same thing. And they're like, well you can't, you can't do an autonomous bus 'cause you gotta fuel it and all that. You can have an autonomous bus that stops and runs on diesel and can still fit very easily into the current infrastructure. Same thing with gas vehicles. So I think. think there's gonna be kind of some races on these technologies and how they roll out.

Ken Lucci 27:25

So I, I want the, uh, audience that's looking on YouTube to benefit from this video. So, John, can you start this over? I'm gonna give a little narration. This is, this is, do you agree, James? This is a pretty much full-sized transit bus.

James Blain 27:42

Yeah. It looks to be a typical transit bus. I mean, it's, it's made to look like a panda, so I'm guessing it's in

Ken Lucci 27:50

Okay, so it, it's definitely in China and I'll we'll get into how fast and how much further ahead that they are. But this is the first self-driving bus and it's in operation in the city in China. You step on, you put your fingerprint in, and then it, except she was a rider, looks to me like she's doing facial recognition and she's telling it perhaps where she's getting off. And now there's another passenger who has put his hand in front of a vending machine and looks like just pulled out a, uh, a carton of milk.

James Blain 28:27

And the vending machines built into the side of the bus is, I think The interesting thing to note there. It's like

Ken Lucci 28:31

Yeah. It's part of the bus. And, and all I can tell you is I'm just looking at what the financial model looks like on how many, you know, what that adds to the, um, the

James Blain 28:43

It's probably sponsored by seven 11, man

Ken Lucci 28:45

Right? So, okay. This is interesting. It has a support driver. It has the driver who's. full right. And the driver has got his hands on his knees. And the driver, the, uh, the, the, the steering wheel is going without it, it can reach speeds of 15 to 20 kilometers. Looks like it's got tons and tons and tons of, electronics all over the place. there's no question that China is way ahead of us. Okay. And, um, not, you know, there's, there's rumors that there's gonna be more autonomous information coming out at the upcoming C-D-N-L-A show. Um. But China is way ahead of us. There are 30,000 robo taxis on the road. You are seeing now that this is the, okay, this is, this is gin. I, I don't pronounce the Chinese city, but that's one of

James Blain 29:45

It's in

Ken Lucci 29:46

the la Yeah. It's one of the largest Chinese cities. So I think, James, you're right. I think that the public transit route will see the first autonomous buses. Um. John, if I'm not mistaken, it not fast forward, but the top of this bus to me looks like it could be lp. It could be Look, it could be, yep. There. There you go. So what is that? What is that? Can you go backwards a

James Blain 30:19

he's got, those are probably, my guess is it might have battery packs on the roof and then that's probably the air conditioning unit directly behind it with the fans. So I think that's battery pack that we see. And then you have fans. I would be surpris. 'cause a lot of, a lot of them, believe it or not, even here in the US I've seen several vehicles where they're putting the battery packs on the roof.

Ken Lucci 30:39

know, a few things on the whole autonomous subject. China has a different business structure and regulatory structure than the United States. Okay. Um, there are no lobbyists in China. The, the government basically.

James Blain 30:56

don't get us canceled. Be very careful.

Ken Lucci 30:58

I know, well, I know the government has, its has, let me put it this way, the government is knee deep in all business over there, right? So in the United States, I think you're gonna have several things. I think that the, uh, the Roba van, the robo van perhaps

James Blain 31:16

Rebo.

Ken Lucci 31:17

the Ovn, the ovn may stop below the DOT mark, which is what passenger count 15.

James Blain 31:25

yeah, but I think, I think the question there becomes, I mean, the only, big things on that side, I don't think he's gonna stop there. 'cause it's not like they can make it follow hours of service. Like, it's not like it needs a medical card. You know? I mean the, the concerns that the headaches that we start seeing when you start getting into that world, if you don't have to have a safety driver, they don't really exist anymore.

Ken Lucci 31:53

It's really repair, and maintenance.

James Blain 31:54

Yeah.

Ken Lucci 31:56

So let's just make the assumption that the transit bus is gonna have the steering wheel and you're going to need an attendant. I, I think the regulatory in the United States will slow down the evolution or the implementation of the larger autonomous vehicles. I believe that Waymo wrote, uh, Tesla, Uber and Lyft. and we ride and pony ai, I think.

James Blain 32:28

throw a wild card at you, right, because I think the wild card is trucking.

Ken Lucci 32:35

Oh, let's not go there yet. I, I, my point was I believe that the autonomous delivery. Which is what I call it, the rob taxis and autonomous delivery. It's a foregone conclusion that sedan and SUV, that size vehicle is going to have massive adoption on the autonomous side, but the larger vehicles, I think that that's where the wild card is because. What the, the, uh, Rob taxis have is they have the ability to lobby like crazy. I, I do think the larger equipment, I think the trucking industry is gonna have a hell of a lot to say about it, including the Teamsters by the way.

James Blain 33:19

Well, and I, I think there's a couple things that are worth bringing up here, and I, I don't wanna go off the rails, but who is the political party in charge at the time, during the push is gonna matter, right? Because whether or not they're business friendly or they're trying to look out for safety or, or what their goals are. The reason I brought up the trucking though, is a lot of people don't realize in the world of motor coaches, we have so much that is like legacy trucking stuff, because it's written, they make up like 90, if not more percent of the commercial vehicle space is trucking. And then you get this little tiny part.

Ken Lucci 34:01

Which is Passenger, yeah, Yeah.

James Blain 34:03

And the, and you see that. I mean, and, and again, you even see that if you look at the regulatory body, if you look at the size of the FMCs a's passenger carrying division, right? At one point, and I can't make this up, if I remember correctly, there was literally one person that made up that entire division because of a series of retirements and people moving out. it's a very small division.

Ken Lucci 34:28

For the audience, FM C.

James Blain 34:30

federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is the federal body that regulates. Thanks, Ken. Um, and the big thing there is that you've gotta keep in mind that when they're writing regulation, when they're doing this, the only way that we get considered is when we have motor coach operators and we have associations, or we have people that make sure the voice gets heard. And so I think the big thing there is this is something that at an association level needs to be talked about, right? What does this look like? What do we want? What do we expect? And then the other thing, and this was a huge conversation when I was talking to the gentleman about safety drivers, is the question becomes, are you on the winning or losing side? And if you think of when I was a little kid and we would fly and visit my family overseas and I'd go in to see the pilot, there's an engineer, there's a pilot, there's like, you know, a bunch of guys in there running this plane. Now it's two pilots. And the airline pilot association is fighting because they wanna go down to one pilot because the argument is the plane can land itself, fly itself. And so we're gonna see that there as well.

Ken Lucci 35:38

All right, so let's talk about, no. Now let's talk about this. What do you believe based on your conversations. The motor coach operators thought processes about not embracing or embracing autonomous.

James Blain 35:54

So first we already mentioned it, that you have to decouple electric from autonomous, because a lot of them are confusing electric to autonomous. And the argument becomes, well, I can't drive that cross country. Right? So you gotta decouple that. Yes, you can run it on diesel two. I think in that space, you probably have to have someone on the bus, even if it's not a driver, even if we completely and totally got rid of the steering wheel. If you are leaving the city, you probably have to have someone on the bus to manage it.

Ken Lucci 36:27

wouldn't you think that you could do an Apple watch or a monitor to make sure the person's alive?

James Blain 36:32

yeah. But I mean, I, because here's the job is gonna change,

Ken Lucci 36:36

Of course. Of course. Do you think the operators are looking forward to that or are they gonna resist it?

James Blain 36:42

If I'm being completely and totally honest, I think the vast majority of the industry thinks it's so far away they're not considering it. That is and and that's the honest truth is I think you maybe have 10 to 15% of the industry that's looking at it. And the other side of the industry is like, dude, I'll be gone by the time that happens. I don't

Ken Lucci 37:01

Well, I'm not gonna say who, but I know somebody who's got an autonomous bus, uh, an autonomous bus sitting in their yard. And it's been, yeah. And I also know that there is tech companies that are building the autonomous tech to go on top of an existing bus.

James Blain 37:23

Okay, so, so that's a whole can of worms. So I was reading an article recently

Ken Lucci 37:27

to, to to integrate with an existing bus

James Blain 37:30

Correct. And that, believe it or not, is going to be a new safety and danger concern because there are companies that are selling software that basically is the guts of a camera that you put onto your dash, cam, and it plugs into the OB two port and it tries to connect to the electric steering, the fly by wire, and it tries to basically ghetto, right? It's essentially ghetto rigging itself into a self-driving car. And if the regulators don't get ahead of that, net doesn't get banned. You are literally gonna have people that are like, oh, I'm gonna take my car that was never met for self-driving and I'm gonna put this little device on there and it's gonna become self-driving. And I think, I think, I think our producer might have got a video of this.

Ken Lucci 38:13

You know something. Our producer, I'm gonna tell you something right now, John Tieman is worth that $250 a month that we pay him to produce. Uh, you're gonna get, you're gonna get all kinds of phone calls saying, Hey, if Lucci is gonna pay the two 50, I'll pay you 500 do it.

James Blain 38:30

we get him at a discounted rate. We give him a dollar a

Ken Lucci 38:33

he's he's my, and we buy him baseball and we let him, and we let him buy

James Blain 38:37

taking Yeah, so, so clearly we're, we're paying him enough that he's buying swag with our logo on it we haven't even seen yet. So clearly the

Ken Lucci 38:44

Alright,

James Blain 38:45

is bs.

Ken Lucci 38:46

so run, run this video. This is to, this is an open source device that makes any self-driving car autonomous. James, you are always on the cutting edge.

James Blain 38:56

is a horrible idea. It's

Screenshare 38:58

A 7-year-old smartphone, but it's one that can drive hundreds of cars autonomously. It's virtually Chris. Today we're reviewing the comma, three X custom hardware dedicated to running open pilot, the best driver assistance system in my opinion, and one that I have driven for

James Blain 39:14

So here's a Honda that is not self-driving, that

Screenshare 39:17

your car's. Adaptive cruise control and Lane keep assist systems with state-of-the-art machine learning, trained on millions of minutes of human driving. In today's video, I'm gonna tell you why you absolutely need to upgrade your car with this, let's touch on the hardware briefly. The comma three X has 3 10 80 P cameras, including a narrow cam, wide cam, and a driver monitoring camera. It runs on a rag in. 8 45 and has a beautiful six inch OLED screen.

John Tyreman 39:42

All right. James, what do you think?

James Blain 39:44

So it's, look, I get the idea and I, I like the idea, but kind of like my opinion of communism. It sounds good till you try it. Um, it, it

Ken Lucci 39:55

How do you, why did you get political?

John Tyreman 39:58

We were just talking about

James Blain 39:59

couldn't, couldn't help it. Hey, hey. No, no, no. You, you said that about

Ken Lucci 40:03

do you think, do you think that the, the new, the New York Socialist Mayor is gonna give out these devices? Is that what you're trying to say? Is

James Blain 40:11

don't know. Look, I, I gotta go to New York on a regular basis. Let's

John Tyreman 40:15

we'll have to ask Matt

James Blain 40:16

no, no. We're not saying anything about New York. We, we gotta wait till a lawyer comes on. But here's the thing. It sounds like a great idea. And what, what they're trying to do is they're trying to expand and say you have these existing technologies. That are on the vehicle, we're gonna expand and we're gonna develop, and we're gonna photo push those out. Look, I'll tell you right now, there are things that when it comes to safety, you gotta think about. I remember when my kids were little and I wanted to put tablets in the car, and I was like, oh, I can get a tablet holder for the backseat. But I work in safety and my first concern. What if there's an accident, has it been tested? Do we know if it works? It doesn't just have to hold the tablet. It's gotta be safe. So I ended up giving Toyota $70 each because Toyota has some that are designed to integrate into the seat that have been tested, that work with their vehicles that lock the tablet in place, that have those considerations from the people that designed it. My concern is a tool like this is not being made in conjunction with or in keeping with Honda. This is not something where it's Honda sponsored and Honda's working with them. These guys are basically trying to figure out how to kind of connect in and do that. And so when you get that, what happens if you take your vehicle in, they do an update. All of a sudden you connect that in and it doesn't talk the same way and now your lane assist wants to take you into the other lane 'cause it thinks it's keeping you on self-driving and it doesn't. These are all things that. To a certain extent. We want to be open. We want companies to, to work with. We want it to be there. But we also have to keep in mind that these, I I, when I had my first driving lesson, my very first lesson from my dad who's a former Cobra attack helicopter pilot and, and was doing flight instruction, right? His biggest thing is you're going to become complacent. You're going to forget what this is. You are driving a weapon, right? And we've seen it. We've seen terrorists, weaponize vehicles in attacks, and we forget that this is something that can easily transport us, but it can easily take human life. And so my only thing with this is that if it's not done in conjunction with the manufacturer, if you're not making sure you're doing it properly, if you don't have the right sensors, this can become very dangerous Very quickly. Yes.

Ken Lucci 42:35

And to me, I, I, I, the sad part, the, the problem I see is the regulatory agencies. Let's not do with these, these plug and play autonomous vehicle smartphones. Okay? These, cameras that suction cup onto the windshield, let's not do with them what we did with the vaping technology, which is let it go out there in the market and cause all kinds of problems and kill people, and then try to regulate it. This needs to be proactively regulated.

James Blain 43:10

Right. And, and look, this is something that could be done, right. You know, if Honda said, we're gonna have a program, we're gonna work, you know, we have these open APIs available, we have these requirements, we've gone in, we've done this, we have all of these things, you can connect to 'em. This is how you use this documentation. That's one thing, right? And, and I, I haven't spent enough time in the retrofit market to know if anybody's doing that. But to my knowledge, and from everything I've read on these articles, these companies are basically trying to, you know, figure out how do I talk to a Honda? How do I talk to, how do I make something that talks to everything? But the problem is the proper testing, the proper protocols, the proper things that are needed to make it safe, to be on the same road as my wife and kids aren't being done. And that's always what I think about, you know, is if it was my mother, if this was my, you know, my wife, my kids, my family. Is this something I trust with them? And the if the answer is no, do you really want it on your roads?

Ken Lucci 44:06

No it not at all. John, what's the next video you've got? Is this the last video for this episode?

John Tyreman 44:12

Well, we spent a bit of time on the, uh, the autonomous, uh, topic and I think that's a lightning rod of sorts. I do have a few more. We can skip some if we want,

James Blain 44:21

No. Let's go. Let's go. Bonus

John Tyreman 44:23

So, um, I'll tee, I'll tee this one up. So the next section is, uh, maintaining control of the vehicle. Right. And so James, I guess like I'm gonna share a few short videos of motor coach and bus drivers losing control of their vehicles.

James Blain 44:39

And what do we, we got like a transit bus that we're starting with.

John Tyreman 44:42

looks like a transit bus to start with, but I think some of these same kind of like principles can be applied to the motor coach

James Blain 44:48

Oh yeah,

John Tyreman 44:49

as

Ken Lucci 44:49

So the transit bus, we're looking at a camera, the transit bus, camera three. The bus is going 36.5 miles per hour.

James Blain 44:58

And we're we're, it looks like this camera is directly behind the driver, above the first seat, so we right now, we can't see anything out the windows. I don't know if that'll change, but we can definitely see the driver at, at least they got their hands at 10 and two. So far better than some of the other ones we've seen.

John Tyreman 45:13

It is. Yep. So my big question is what could these drivers do differently to maintain control of their vehicle? So let's start with this first one.

James Blain 45:25

So we're making a left turn. We've somehow gone off. He wasn't,

Ken Lucci 45:33

Oh,

James Blain 45:33

oh God. What are you doing, man? Oh, no. All right. Okay. Yeah, that it hit the fan

Ken Lucci 45:45

You need to, you need to rewind that.

James Blain 45:48

Like, can, can we, is there a slow motion with no audio we can play? So, so we found out, so this, this goes so wrong, so fast. Like, but we didn't catch it. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt and he is making a left turn. He hits some bumps and he, he bumps right outta the seat. Game

Ken Lucci 46:07

even possible? How is that even

James Blain 46:09

Because, well, not only that, like it is, look, if you don't wear your seatbelt one, I don't care how smart you are, you're dumb. Like thing to do. And two, like it's federal law, like if you're the driver, you have to wear a seatbelt. But once he bounces out of the seat, right, the turn something goes wrong, he hits some kind of bumps or something, he bounces outta the seat and now he, he's, it doesn't look like he's in good enough shape to pull himself back up. Or the Gs are pulling him hard enough 'cause he is basically sitting like his butt hanging off the seat trying to hold the wheel to not

Ken Lucci 46:44

Oh, guys, if you're listening to this, if you're listening to this, this is totally worthwhile going on YouTube when you get to, don't do it in the car when you,

James Blain 46:55

into like a forest.

Ken Lucci 46:57

God.

John Tyreman 46:58

I think it's a house actually.

James Blain 47:00

Oh, that's even worse. So you, yeah,

Ken Lucci 47:02

he crashes

James Blain 47:04

I'm talking about keeping my kids and my wife and my family safe on the road, and this guy's crashing into the neighborhood killing 'em at

Ken Lucci 47:10

Okay, so, so, so he's okay. He's making a turn.

James Blain 47:15

it looked good until he

Ken Lucci 47:16

Then, Then, he literally bounces James, what do you call those seats that have, so the springs

James Blain 47:22

Well, so they're, they're typically, they're suspension seats, right? They've got,

Ken Lucci 47:25

He bounces out of the

James Blain 47:26

pneumatics, he bounces right out of it.

Ken Lucci 47:29

and he obviously goes way off the road, hits a bus, hits a house, and there's all kinds of trees around him. So play by play? Can you, can you play by play? What, what? What should he have done here?

James Blain 47:44

Put the seatbelt on. Like that's the worst part. This is like I, I look at you look at teams, you look at coaches, right? You know, the coaches don't ever come out and start screaming, oh my God, you didn't do the advanced super. They just start screaming fundamental, fundamental fundamentals for if you would've put the seatbelt on, this whole thing could have been avoided.

Ken Lucci 48:02

you know, the sad part is I hope Tim Delaney doesn't watch this 'cause he'll get out of the bus business. He'll get out of the bus insurance business tomorrow morning. Oh my

James Blain 48:11

Yeah. Oh, oh, oh. And I love how he's, he's so, so those of you that, that are listening, you can't see it like, he bounces out and for a second it doesn't look like things are going too bad. And he's like, yeah, he, he's like, kinda like when you're trying to teach a 16-year-old, you're trying to drive it from the pastor seat. Like the same type of like, he's just calmly trying to drive, sitting on the floor next to his chair, and the worst part is you can tell he's lost the ability to get to the pedals because where it really goes off the rails. I think I just saw him go through like a little white picket fence where it really goes off the rails is buses are like trains, man. There's so much momentum, there's so much potential. It just keeps going. If he would've been in the seat, he could have hit the brakes. Right. I always tell people, turn slow down for your turns. Right? But this literally is like the ultimate, just wear your seatbelt.

Ken Lucci 49:05

do me a favor, run this again because I wanna look at the speed as he's down to 9.4 miles an hour as he makes the turn. Then he's back up to 15. He's back up to 19.

John Tyreman 49:15

is got his foot on the

Ken Lucci 49:16

He's got his foot on the accelerator. Oh my God.

James Blain 49:20

He hits the house at 20 miles an hour.

Ken Lucci 49:23

This is

James Blain 49:24

call. Looking at the speed there, uh, although I will say the, the camera might be a little funky 'cause he is, he's doubled over. His head is down by the door. He is, he's face down button the air right down the stairs, and it still says 2.3 miles an hour. So clearly the back wheels are probably off the ground and this thing is creeping like,

Ken Lucci 49:43

I mean, did he really ever have control of this bus? James, maybe for the first minute and a half of this video.

James Blain 49:52

so the foreshadowing was when I said, we've got 10 and two, we've got a good start. Right. Like, like it's, it's one of those things where, like the start was great. The only good thing was when we were there at 10 and two, and then it just,

Ken Lucci 50:06

Unbelievable. Wow. Wow. Okay. Let's do the

James Blain 50:10

It's gotta, it's gotta get worse, right?

Ken Lucci 50:11

It, it has to get better. It can't be this bad. You can't end on that.

James Blain 50:18

Okay.

Screenshare 50:20

It was at this moment, he knew investor and with the speed and skill of cheetah, he

James Blain 50:26

How

Screenshare 50:26

avert disaster.

James Blain 50:26

you do that?

Screenshare 50:28

Okay.

John Tyreman 50:30

All right, so James, you wanna tee this one up for our listening audience?

James Blain 50:34

I don't even know where to start on this one. So we're

Ken Lucci 50:36

the coach driver left the break off

James Blain 50:38

so well, but, but there's so much going on here. So we're back in Europe. This looks like some kind of double decker. I think I just saw Van Ho. I think it's one of Van Ho's. Double Deckers or No, that's VDL. That's a VDL. Um, so, so you've got this, this VDL double decker and for some reason right, we're in the middle of an intersection and the bus is stopped in the middle of the intersection. The driver is outside the bus, walking to the back of the bus. I have no idea why. Um, but we're there and what's odd is like, I get that he didn't put the parking brake on. That's what it says. It says, coach driver left the break off. But what you see here is it stopped when he's walking back. Right? He's gotten out of the bus. Right. We're back to, to driving with the, the, the correct side of the road. It looks well, no, this might be Europe again. It looks like we're on the wrong side of the road again, so we're probably UK again, but this guy's gone around and he's walked out. He's, he's exited the bus. He's gone around the front of the bus. He's walked down the side it looks like, but I don't, yeah, this just doesn't make sense to me because the bus starts rolling. Uh, there's so much wrong here. Like, I don't even know where to start.

John Tyreman 51:54

Could just be a faulty emergency break. Sometimes the emergency breaks get worn down and then it just, it'll let go.

James Blain 52:04

that's, that's not real common in the bus world, right? So if your maintenance team doesn't suck, right? If they're doing what there's, even if they're doing the bare minimum. That shouldn't happen. Um, what I think we're seeing here is something's gone wrong. He's got his hazards on, he is got out to look at it. I mean, look, my thing is this guy's stopping in front of an intersection. It's a horrible place to stop. So I don't know why he is out there. Part of me wonders if maybe this isn't ai, but it, it's always hard to tell with these dash cams. Um, but I, I hope the other thing is, and 'cause he goes back in and then he comes back to the back of it again. So I don't, I don't

Ken Lucci 52:47

No, it, it's just

James Blain 52:48

on. Yeah. This,

Ken Lucci 52:50

is not as bad. This is not as bad as running into the house in Carmel, California.

James Blain 52:56

No, and, and I think one of the things that's, that's worth bringing up here is we always tell people when something goes wrong, when something breaks down, when there's any kinda issue, you have gotta think about a couple different things. One, you gotta stay calm. Two, you gotta keep pastors calm. Three, you gotta get to a safe place and take your time. You know that one to me, just, I don't know. Oh. All right. We're back in Jersey now for this

Ken Lucci 53:19

Oh. Oh, wow. Oh God. Oh God.

John Tyreman 53:23

In true Jersey fashion, we've got a little bit of road rage, so that's gonna be the theme of this

James Blain 53:29

so, so before we even get to road rage, is it me or is that bus heading the wrong way on the shoulder of the turnpike in Jersey?

John Tyreman 53:38

Well, yeah, for some reason they've repurposed that left lane for traffic yet. No, it's not you. So let's take a look at

James Blain 53:47

Yeah, that's, that's something new I haven't seen in Jersey. Is a bus coming the wrong way at me?

John Tyreman 53:51

All right, here we go.

James Blain 53:54

Cool.

Ken Lucci 54:01

So we're

James Blain 54:02

All right. We got Motor Coach.

John Tyreman 54:05

So, I think we're a trucker.

Screenshare 54:06

Get that the

James Blain 54:08

are

Screenshare 54:08

out.

James Blain 54:10

so,

Screenshare 54:12

I'm not moving

James Blain 54:12

so

Screenshare 54:13

the

James Blain 54:14

you got a motor coach trying to get in front of a semi-truck? He clearly needs to get over. Oh dude, what are you doing?

Screenshare 54:22

let's see. Bill, you, bill,

James Blain 54:25

Oh, but what are you doing?

John Tyreman 54:35

But that's not it.

James Blain 54:37

Oh, it gets better. So is this the same bus? So, so real quick while this part's playing, so we had, we had a semi-truck with maybe two or three car lengths in front of him and you had a bus that was a full-sized charter bus that was trying to get in front. And this charter bus is literally just cutting over. Um, and oh, now the driver is just having a road rage fight with the truck. I hope to God there are no passengers in that

Ken Lucci 55:09

oh. You John, you need to, you need to back that up and let James play by, play it

James Blain 55:17

Okay, yeah, turn the audio off and we'll give play by play.

John Tyreman 55:19

Here we go.

James Blain 55:21

All right, so first things I thought it was gonna be the, the transit buses coming in the fast lane that's been repurposed. So you've got th maybe two or three car lengths between a semi-truck and a car in front of it. That gap closes as things slow down. This motor coach is trying to get over in front of the semi-truck, and the semi-truck doesn't wanna let him over, and the guy runs outta room. So instead of taking the exit and just kind of going around, this guy now is driving on kind of the, the no drive area, and now he's forced onto the shoulder 'cause the lane ended. So he's right next to the semi-truck. Eventually it looks like there's some debris or something in there. He gives up. So then there's a, a cut. Now we're coming up. You gotta pay the toll in. So the guy's going through the easy pass, the toll out there in Jersey, and the bus went through first and there's what looks to be a Lexus four 60. And the bus just cuts it off hard. And then the bus is clearly gunning for this trucker. 'cause the trucker's in the far lane. The bus cuts all the way over in front of that. Well, then the trucker goes to the right lane and now the bus is literally halfway into the slow lane with the semi-truck forced onto the shoulder. So what you've got here is you've got road rage. You've literally, and, and I gotta give it to you. I, I hate to say this. Usually I, I wanna tip my hat to our motor coach guys. I gotta tip my hat to the trucker. Should the trucker have let him in, not let him in is the only place that's kind of iffy. But bud, look, if there's no room that's coming to a stop, that motor coach should have slowed down and tried to get

John Tyreman 57:06

And who knows what this trucker's hauling too,

James Blain 57:08

yeah, he might have hazmat like, who knows, but

Ken Lucci 57:12

this speaks to something. I think everybody needs to assume that a camera is on them at all times, and I think that I, I really believe that if I'm the owner of this coach company and I ever found out that this. I don't see a date on here, but boy, I, I have a real problem with that motor coach driver using my motor coach, basically as a, as a, yeah, I know.

James Blain 57:41

Like there would I, I gotta tell you, any, any driver that engages in road rage, right? Like, look, if the, the driver kind of going over to the, if there were passengers in this vehicle and I'm involved in any ma any level, I'm losing my mind. But the other thing is, and, and I'm not gonna call 'em out on it, do it, is very clear in this video whose bust that is. Like, there is no doubt you can clearly see the company name on the side of it. So it's not like, you know, they're not anybody that's watching this. If this causes an accident, can you imagine if that trucker would've hit that rolled the truck and now you have a fatal accident? Are you kidding me? road rage like that is, is never okay. You are the professional. We do this for a living. You gotta find another exit. And not only that, the worst part about this is the first half of the video was bad. The second half of the video, this guy's literally coming over to fight. Like he's literally picking a fight. And the trucker's just like, get your Bs outta here. The most professional guy in this video was the trucker. My hat's off to him. He didn't try to like, it's not like he tried to push him back. It's not like he tried to hit it. But I'll tell you what, if I had to guess, the guy driving that truck owns that truck and he's a lot more worried about that guy messing up his truck than he is. 'cause like I said, the the guy that handled that, right. Unfortunately in this case, it wasn't our industry, it was the trucker. So good job to the trucker on that

Ken Lucci 59:08

All right. We're just gonna keep going here. Right?

John Tyreman 59:11

Yeah, this is the last video that I have. So let's, uh, we'll watch this one, get a reaction and then we can wrap up. Um, but this is kind of flipping the script a little bit, right? So, uh, what happens when you are a motor coach driver and there are impatient drivers around you that are expressing road rage, and so how do you handle that as a driver? That's kind of the main question for this one.

James Blain 59:34

Not like the last guy.

John Tyreman 59:35

Not like the last guy. Exactly.

Screenshare 59:38

This bus driver was doing a tour when suddenly a reckless driver pulled of him only to brake check him. After both collided the road, rager jumped out and started blaming the bus driver for the accident. However, when the reckless driver called the police, things backfired spectacularly, the bus driver simply showed the dash cam footage to the cops resulting in the reckless driver losing his license.

Ken Lucci 59:59

look, that I, I, okay, so

James Blain 1:00:03

And, and they gave us the play by play. So that's there. But

Ken Lucci 1:00:05

they gave us, and, and I, I interrupted it because I saw the, the smash. But let's play this, let's play this one more time please,

John Tyreman 1:00:13

Sure.

Ken Lucci 1:00:14

and I'll shut up.

James Blain 1:00:16

All right, so for those of you not watching, so we've got, uh, black cae. It literally comes flying around the bus. He cuts right in front of it, slams on the brakes and gets the bus to hit him. This is clearly an insurance fraud play, right? And the guy that gets out is stacked like this guy's arms are as big as my head. it's not like, you know, you got a tiny little guy. I will tell you right now, one of the best things I see in this dash cam footage is this driver did not get out. He did not try to confront him. You've got a big guy visibly upset. Look at, to start something. This guy's probably, his, his payday would've been if something would've happened, if anything at all, all altercation, anything at all like that, right? And the driver, I don't know what the rest of this plays out as, but this is insurance fraud.

John Tyreman 1:01:00

Do you think so though? Because I mean, like I, I've experienced road rage just from other people out there on the roads. They just get angry and they, and something happens and it ticks 'em off to the point where they, they need to finish their vendetta. Right?

James Blain 1:01:13

So, so two things. All right. So the. The difference between that is you are not a, you're not a paycheck on wheels. Right? And every owner on this podcast, right, I can't see the head nodding, but I can feel the heads nodding. They're out for us. They stopped chasing ambulances during COVID and they started chasing buses. A bus is required to have a $5 million insurance policy. No lawyer in his right mind that is a plaintiff's attorney is gonna go for anything less than the 5 million because they know that they're required to have it. So they're going for the policy limit. The other thing that tells me that this isn't road rage is the way this guy gets out and the hand signals that he is making, right? He's, he's looking at the guy go, oh yeah, good job. Oh, it was this close. Oh, he's already putting together the BS story. He's already, when those cops get there, man, this guy was followed too closely. He ran to the back of me. If you look at the way he did this, this was very meticulous. Like, it's not usually when you see like the hardcore rage, dude, they're flying in. They're, they're all over the road. You can tell they've got kind of the, the red out driving. This guy was not aggressive. This was a hundred percent premeditated fraud. He knows what he's doing. He gets right in front of there and then he sets it up to get hit. And what's funny is this guy clearly knows that if he really break checks him, he is gonna get hurt because he purposely sets it up. So there's an impact, but not enough that he's gonna get killed or hurt or maimed, which is fraud 1 0 1. The the big thing here though is, you know, you've, there's only so much you can do. I, I, I always say most accents are voidable. This is one of the few times where this really, probably, there wasn't a lot this guy could do to avoid

Ken Lucci 1:02:58

I think the bus driver did the best he could.

James Blain 1:03:00

no, and I'll tell you what, um, in defense of this driver, right, as he, he's, he sees the guy come around, he's slowing down. He is slowing down. He could have slowed down more. But I've literally watched these vehicles where the bus comes to a stop and oh boy, throws it in reverse and smashes into the bus. this is an ad. This is, dude, this is a pitch for telematics. Have cameras.

Ken Lucci 1:03:21

Well, and that's what I said. I, I, I really believe we have to, in all our actions when we're driving, I think we have to really make the assumption and put it in our head that we are being recorded somewhere. Because a lot of even consumer drivers, the consumer cars now, they're recording a dash cam for their own, for their own benefit. Wow. This was an exciting episode.

James Blain 1:03:44

I, I, think there's a lot of great lessons here and I think, I think the, the biggest takeaways that, if I had to say like, what if you're an operator listening to this, or if, if you get one of these sound bites, what's your takeaway? And I think the takeaways are. You have to invest in every step of the process. You gotta train 'em, right? So they know the reference points. Where to turn, how to turn. You gotta have the telematics to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. They're getting it done. And then ultimately, you gotta be looking to the future. I mean, I, I don't think we, John, I don't know if that was intentional or not. I don't know if you're trying to lead a horse to water here, but Ken, what? What's your thoughts? I mean, I think this was a great illustration of that.

Ken Lucci 1:04:22

we're in the business of transporting human beings, and I think you can never, ever lose sight of the, the, even if you are the only one in the, in the vehicle, you've got extremely valuable cargo. how you can drive a transit bus without a a seatbelt on. It's beyond me. That was the worst one. But at the end of the day, I do think that there's no destination that is so important that you have to risk your vehicle, every vehicle that size is a missile

James Blain 1:04:53

I, I agree with you. I think the road rage one really got to me because I think we've all had that moment where you're just frustrated and angry and you know, who knows what kind of day you had. But that a, a bus and a truck having an accident could have very easily killed the drivers and potentially everyone

John Tyreman 1:05:13

one. Yeah.

Ken Lucci 1:05:14

and look at the damage it did to the brand. Now it's out there on YouTube forever. And, I hate to say it, if there's ever a problem where they do have a fatal, that video will come back and hurt that it'll come back to haunt them.

James Blain 1:05:29

Look, I, I deal with that all the time. I, I, I get customers that are, Hey, you know, we wanna do training and we wanna do this, and we wanna do that, and then an accident happens. They're like, oh, we're so lucky we implemented everything you do. And I'm like, well, no. You bought the program, you didn't do the program. Oh well we're gonna do the program now. And I'm like, you know, this is a day late in the buck short. Right? You've gotta deal with what you gotta deal with. And so I think, I think it's a very good instance where being proactive about your training and your hiring and your telematics and your entire safety program now, even though you know a lot of operators think it doesn't make me money, is what ultimately makes sure that you are in business making money.

Ken Lucci 1:06:11

And that is a perfect place to end this episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. We really have to do more episodes with John out here as part commentator. And a park producer. And we love the fact that he chose to get a ground transportation podcast, baseball hat, um,

James Blain 1:06:32

Without getting either one of us one.

John Tyreman 1:06:33

There's more where that came from. I'm testing them out

Ken Lucci 1:06:35

from. There you go. All right, guys. Uh, thanks for, uh, putting this on and, uh, we'll see everybody in the audience next week. unfortunately, if you were watching, excuse me, just listening to this, you definitely need to watch it on YouTube. This is, this is absolutely the episode to sit through on YouTube.

James Blain 1:06:57

Oh yeah.

John Tyreman 1:06:58

All right, if you made it this far, everybody give us a, like, give us a comment. Follow the show on YouTube, apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Uh, send us an email at info@groundtransportationpodcast.com. And like Ken said, we'll see you next week.

1:07:13

Thank you for listening to the ground transportation podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX training and to contact James, go to PAX training.com. And for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, Go to driving transactions.com. We'll see you next time on the ground transportation podcast.