Friday, August 19, 2016

Driver Training

For the past two days I have been training to drive a bus. This is the actual,mohysical, behind the wheel training. I'm training on more modern transit busses. These differ from my Carpenter in several respects.

  • Transit busses have the engine in the rear. The steering wheels are behind the driver's seat which makes for a totally different driving experience.
  • The engine on the transit bus is much more responsive, needing less foot movement.
  • The transit bus has an air tank with air powered doors, air powered wipers, air brakes and an air adjusted seat.
Yesterday I found my major problem was that because I don't drive often, I'm tense when driving which leads to over correction on steering and a consequential zig zag down the road. Today this was much improved.

Yesterday I had no problem with other road users. Today, 3 vehicles passed me in a no passing area in an area where they could not see oncoming traffic. Talk about suicidal! There would have been no way I could steer away and probably not much chance of braking. 

That was not all. One guy was so busy on a curvy downgrade that he was well into my lane coming at me head on. I braked but not hard enough to throw my instructor out the window. Fortunately the other guy woke up and steered back to his side of the road. Without a shadow of doubt, his little car would have been a crumpled wreck and the bus might have had a scratch in the paint on the front bumper.

Needless to say, there was more... A cyclist riding the wrong way up the road toward me as though in a bizarre suicide attempt. 

It all begs two questions.
  1. Has anybody in South Carolina ever passed a driving test?
  2. Have South Carolina drivers started drinking ethanol rather than putting it in the fuel tank?

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