Back in December the MTA finally had enough of bus drivers talking and texting on the road and announced a nearly zero-tolerance policy in which a driver is suspended without pay for five days for a first violation and is fired for a second violation within two years. So how's that working out for them? Really well, actually. Thanks for asking.
Previously the MTA was issuing about 30 violations a month for cell phone usage (between 2009 and 2010 it issued 647 of them!). But since the start of 2011 the MTA has only issued eight violations, according to Steve Vidal, vice president of bus security and training.
With all of the bad buses in the news these days, its nice to hear that a good old scare tactic like threatening a person's livelihood can still do the trick. Because otherwise things like this happen:
