TRANSIT DRIVER ESCAPES THROUGH WINDOW: BETTER SHIELDS NEEDED
WINNIPEG, July 25, 2022 – Last evening, July 24, 2022, a passenger attempted to stab a Winnipeg Transit driver with a knife by reaching around the driver’s shield. According to police, the passenger boarded the bus around 7:00 pm and caused a disturbance. The driver stopped the bus and asked the passenger to leave, at which point the passenger attempted to assault the driver. The driver ordered all passengers to safely exit the bus and then escaped through the driver’s side window.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time a Transit operator has had to climb out the driver’s side window. In May 2020 there was a fatal stabbing of a passenger and the driver had to escape through the window to safety. In another incident, in June 2021 a bus operator was threatened with a syringe while a passenger grabbed the wheel of the moving bus, causing it to swerve back and forth.
These occurrences are completely preventable with an extended operator shield – the current shields allow anybody to easily reach around into the driver’s compartment. Since they were installed in 2019, we have been advocating for an extension and have yet to see them installed.
An extended shield will make it much more difficult for someone to reach into the driver’s compartment and buy valuable time for an operator to communicate with the Control Center if a disturbance should occur.
The current design of operator shields puts Transit workers, passengers inside the bus, and members of the surrounding public at risk. A bus is a large vehicle capable of doing immense harm in the wrong hands. “We need to do something about this – we do not want another life lost on our Transit system,” asserts Romeo Ignacio, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1505.
We are deeply concerned about the safety of our Transit workers, ridership, and the public.
These incidences must be a wake-up call to our elected officials that extended shields must be installed on all Transit buses.
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