Pedestrian killed when a dump truck plowed into a Fung Wah bus in New York's Chinatown this morning.
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination has ordered Fung Wah to pay a blind couple $60,000 for refusing to let the pair and their guide dog travel to New York.
The commission also ordered the bus line to train its employees about Massachusetts anti-discrimination laws, in a ruling on a complaint brought by the state Attorney General's office on behalf of the couple.
When one of the state troopers who had pulled over Spatch's Fung Wash bus from New York yelled at the driver, repeatedly, to stay in his lane and stop swerving, Spatch figured something was up:
... [A]fter the police let us go and we painfully crawled up to speed in the right-hand lane (ignoring the policeman's last instruction to "drive up to speed on the breakdown lane and then carefully merge into traffic") the driver turned off the heat and opened his driver's side window wide open. The rush of cold air was exhilirating all the way back where we were.
This is when Renee and I realized there was nothing wrong with the steering on the bus (or, apparently, nothing wrong with the steering that a little cold air on the steering column couldn't fix!) The driver was tired. And driving a bus tired. And nodding off while driving a bus tired. Sure enough, no less than 5 minutes later while crawling down the right lane, we hit the rumble strip. This was, then, when the experience turned from a light-hearted adventure with police officers to a very uneasy, unnerving and frankly scary forty-five minutes. ...
Carpundit suggests Fung Wah riders pack a fire extinguisher from now on (here's why):
... What do you expect when you only pay $15 for a trip to New York? For that money, they can barely buy diesel, let alone maintain the bus. Note that the driver apparently doesn't speak English (or wasn't willing to) and did not communicate the need to evacuate the bus - passengers did. ...
Tim reports he was cut off twice by the same Fung Wah bus on I-93 north:
... The first time it pushed itself into the right lane near Morrissey Boulevard, and later near the Dorchester Yacht Club, it pushed its way back into the center right lane. ...
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