I’ve been following the story on the Metro train crash yesterday and I’ve seen the various newscasts that toss blame every where but where it belongs. They’ve blamed sensors, old train cars, mechanical over rides, brush on the side of the tracks, a curve in the track – everything but what it really is.
I’ve spent a long time on this planet and I’ve seen some pretty incompetent people do some really stupid crap in my life. I’ve even spent time in third world countries. But until I moved to Washington, DC, I’d never seen incompetence – at least not on the scale I’ve witnessed here.
When I talk to people who are coming here for the first time, I tell them they’ll be OK if they live by one simple rule; everyone in this city is more important than you are. Everyone in this city is too important to do whatever job it is they’re getting paid for. None of the traffic regulations apply to whoever it is that’s on your right, left, front or rear.
The smartest person in the entire city is whoever you’re talking to at a given moment.
I’ve seen fat-assed female cops direct traffic from inside their air-conditioned squad car parked in the center of the intersection. I’ve seen deaf bus drivers who yelled at a bus-load of people because they didn’t ring the bell to stop the bus (actually he was so old and deaf he couldn’t hear the bell). Even the hobos are incompetent – one guy pretending to be crippled had a T-shirt wrapped around his leg to simulate a cast.
It’s not DC that sucks – it’s the morons who populate the place. Taxi drivers who don’t know their way around the city, waiters that can’t bring you what you ordered, ticket-dollies who write you a parking ticket before your meter expires.
Was I surprised at the crash yesterday? Not in the least. I’ve watched the drivers of those things and their antics with their friends in the cabs of those trains for ten years (ten years next week as a matter of fact). The only thing that surprises is me is that it hasn’t happened more often.
Like the Metro train driver who, on the Blue Line near Arlington Cemetery saw smoke coming out the tunnel near Roslyn during rush hour and he decided to drive his train full of rush hour passengers coming from the Pentagon into the tunnel to “investigate” the fire. Brilliant, huh?
Why do you think the Army is moving Walter Reed from Georgia Avenue to Fort Belvoir and Bethesda? Because they have hundreds of incompetent people working at Walter Reed that they can’t fire, so they’re moving it so they can let them go. But everyone is afraid to say so.
I totally agree with you… I haven’t seen such incompetence as in DC even in the USSR (may be I was just lucky LOL)
I’m forwarding this post the next time somebody asks me why I’m trying to get out after 3 years here.
Add all that to cost of living and fuck dis place. Hands down the worst place I’ve ever lived.
I don’t think I’ve yet seen or heard this much rage from you.
It pleases me a bit. But then I am a certified paranoid. [grin]
Hear Hear Jonn.
Lived there for eight months and thought I was going insane. Maybe it’s because I come from the west coast, where our labor class actually work hard for their money, but in the DC and North VA area, the thick scent of entitlement filled the air.
Example: In LA, when I get my car washed, in the extremely rare case that they’ve missed a spot, I point it out, and the gentlemen will apologize and vigorously amend his mistake by giving the entire area another once over to ensure that I will be satisfied. I happily give him a tip.
Went to a car wash in Alexandria, and it seemed like the whole place was an excuse for a bunch of idiots to be hanging around outside. After the car went through the wash, the car still had numerous spots that needed some extra attention, and when I pointed them out, the dude sighed! and proceeded to give the most perfunctory glaze of a rag that didn’t even clean the spot that I had pointed out. I told them, “Hey buddy. Don’t just tell me you’re done. Why don’t you actually clean the spot your trying to clean, then tell me you’re done.” After a couple more attempts at trying get this guy to actually clean my car, I realized it was pointless, and he just wanted to get back to bullsh*tting with his other buddies who were hanging around.
Now, maybe its just because I’m from LA and our car culture places more emphasis on our cars than those of the east coast who are satisfied with a just a water rinse. Or maybe its a “cultural” thing between the blacks and the mexicans and work ethic. But I’ll tell you one thing, I have never been in as many situations where the overwhelming impression that I’ve received from employees was that I was inconveniencing them for asking them to do their job, then in the DC area.
Now they are saying (news articles, that is) that the driver in the crashed train “loved her job”, “was a meticulous mother who ironed her Metro uniform every day” and that “if she could stopped the train she would have done everything in her power to do so” The last statement was somewhat in response to the fact that the train could have been driven by a computer system instead of a driver, although the driver still has an ability to use an emergency brake, which the driver in question apparently did not deploy since none of the passengers in her train felt any braking at all prior to the impact…
She was hired as a bus driver in 2007 and was selected to become a train driver in December 2008…
It was a well known fact that the system-wide computer system responsible for the speed and braking of the trains has failed before and the alert operators had to use an emergency brake to prevent collisions…
Blaming the cars is no more valid than blaming a shooting on the gun, a misspelled word on the pencil. It was human error, either at the time of the wreck or in the maintenence program that was/wasn’t followed. As a former cross country truck operator, I know the malaise that is DC, NYC, Phila, and other urban areas up that way.
nuf sed
I just read an article on Izvestia.ru on the yesterday’s crash. The article unequivocally states that such collisions are virtually impossible in Moscow Metro due to the Automated Speed Regulation System that ensures the safe distance between the trains and safeguards against an inebriated operator doing some crazy stuff with the train, it will automatically shut the flow of electricity to the train if the distances becomes too short and an operator does not follow the suggested slow-down command delivered by the diminished power going into the train. By the way, Moscow Metro is much bigger than DC Metro and quite older (the oldest station is cir 1935). The most incredible part of the article?? That system was implemented in the early 1990s (the worst economic and financial years in Russia) and IT HAS NEVER FAILED.
Can’t say anything about safety and such, but enjoyed the Moscow Metro. The stations had style and flair, though having parts of the Moscow Symphony doing an impromptu concert so as to get money was both enjoyable and offputting. I also very much like how the entry tunnels also served to get one past certain roads and intersections without the need to face the traffic. Still wondering if those really were pedestrian silhouettes on one car…
I’ve avoided DC for years for just that reason, I live in Northern VA.
DC is just about as corrupt as say, Boston or Albany, NY, but they’re about incompetent and, since they’re Democratic incompetents, the media doesn’t get all nosy about ‘stuff’.
I will stick up for Northern VA.
Like Maryland suburbanites, it’s not that they’re stupid, it’s that they couldn’t care any less about your wants, needs and desires if you were on another planet.
It’s like DC threw up baby boomers all over the place.
DC and Balto are the worst. I have never met so many govt, be it local or federal, employees who take pride in scamming the system. Argh.