From a reader:
I’ve addressed the situation with the school’s transportation department as well as the Principal of the school. I talked to Faye Ingraham at Transportation Services and told her the situation, she said there wasn’t much they could do but recommend a training course for the driver and maybe even traffic violator schools considering his aggressive driving. She wanted me to send an Email of the incident, so I obliged and forwarded it to the Principal as well.
It’s been a few days and I haven’t heard back from the Principal. The staff at the school was nonchalant about what happened as well. Not sure my story is pertinent to any readers but it might be nice to make public the phone number for drivers to call if they have issues with bus drivers on the road.
For what it’s worth the phone number to contact Transportation Services is 561-738-9203. The person to speak to is Faye Ingraham. For a reference, we are in the south area and any callers should write down the number that is on the back of the bus so she can reference who was driving that day.
This is what I sent to Faye as well as Principal Mark Stenner. Feel free to share this for whatever reason:
Hello Faye,
I had the unfortunate experience of coming across one of your school bus drivers this afternoon, one that should not have been on the road; as you well know since we spoke on the phone earlier. Here is my summary of what happened as per your request.
This driver and I both left Mission Bay Plaza at the same time, he was in front of me and were both headed westbound. As we approached the first school zone I noticed he was tailgating anybody that was in front of him. He did manage to obey the school zone speed limits, however the aggressive driving took over immediately leaving the school zones. When he started to tailgate another women I pulled up alongside of him to see if he might have been texting/talking on a cell phone and may have been distracted. He was not and I noticed that there were no students on the bus. As we approached the school (West Boca Community High) approximately one mile east of the Fire Department on Glades Road this bus driver was going to cut off the driver behind me in order to merge into one lane. There were no other cars behind the driver so there was no reason that he couldn’t drop back and fall in behind this driver.
To my surprise him cutting off this driver behind me wasn’t his plans, this bus driver wasn’t going to be happy unless he passed me on the right (non-passing lane) as the lanes were merging into one. He was actually attempting to pass me on the shoulder where the lane he was in had actually ended. I was going 45 MPH so at that point he was well in excess of 45 MPH. When he finally realized that he wasn’t going to accomplish this ridiculous stunt he slowed down and tailgated me to the point I couldn’t even see his headlights.
At this point we were down to one lane and he still was halfway on the shoulder as if he still planned to attempt to pass me. I tapped my brakes to get him off my tailgate and he refused to stop trying to run me off the road by attempting to pass me on the right. At this point I blocked him to keep him from attempting to perform an extremely dangerous maneuver because at this point there were drivers behind him. This is when the bus driver stopped and pulled off the road. I got out of my vehicle to go see if there was something wrong with him. As I approached the bus he floored it, driving off into the grass and in doing so the bus hit my elbow which is now swollen and bruised.
At this point I called the police and made sure to know where he was going. We both ended up at the school where I waited for the Palm Beach Sheriffs to show up. Earlier in this ordeal when we had pulled over to the side of the road, the driver that was cut off pulled up alongside of me and explained he also saw the whole ordeal. This driver met up with me at the school to inform the Sheriffs of exactly what happened. His story mirrors mine and he was really worried.
This sort of driving is completely unacceptable to me and all other tax payers regardless of whether or not there were students on the bus. Many people that drive commercial vehicles have 1-800 numbers on their car/truck and can be used as grounds for termination for the most petty of complaints. This situation was far from petty and could have turned into an accident and the worst that can happen is this driver will be “recommended” to take a driver’s safety course? In this case the only number to contact is yours, provided to me by the school; a number that is not readily available to those on the road with these bus drivers.
I have contact information of the witness but I will not surrender it unless this situation is escalated for whatever reason. Nor will I do so without his permission. The bus driver’s name is Robert (that is the only information the school had) the bus# was 4021 and they told me also to include Code 09. Attached to this Email are a couple of aerial shots of the area where most of this occurred. Map #2 is Glades Road between Ponderosa Drive and Boca Falls Drive by the Fire Department just down the street from the school.
