[Photo courtesy of Tracy Collins/flickr]

Is your bus driver awake? Here’s on that wasn’t, per a post on Brooklynian:

On my way to work this morning, my bus driver on the B65 was nodding off at the wheel. I didn’t realize what was happening at first because I was sitting towards the back of the bus, but whenever we stopped in traffic it would take him an unusually long time to start the bus moving again. Then as we approached my stop at Flatbush, I moved up to the seat right by the front door. That’s when I noticed that whenever the bus was stopped he was falling asleep. He’d nod off and then wake back up with a jerk and look disoriented for a moment before moving the bus forward. None of the other passengers seemed to notice he was doing this.

I *know* I should have said something then and there, but at the time I was so completely taken aback that I was having a hard time believing what I was seeing. I was pretty sleepy myself (though *I* wasn’t operating a multi-ton vehicle) and we were also very close to my stop and all I wanted was to get the hell off of that bus as quickly as possible. So I memorized the bus number and got off and called MTA and reported it as soon as I got to work. I was kicking myself for not calling him out on it right then and there, but at least it got reported, and I hope nobody on that route got hurt in the meantime.

I’m posting about it here for two reasons: to warn folks that this guy is working on the B65 route, and to share the number for reporting this kind of thing. It took me a while to track down the number becasue I wasn’t able to find it on the MTA website. I did finally find it on the Straphangers website. So if you ever need to report a safety issue with an MTA bus, the number is (718) 927-7499.