Muni Diaries

An accident happened on Muni rider Greg’s commute this morning. Here’s his account — details and colors from Greg. Please feel free to sound off in the comments section about how you would tell the story. Greg’s morning started like this:

So there I am, rocking out to some music trying to avoid eye contact with the one homeless person on Muni who always manages to sit across from me and talk loudly to himself, when I realized that the train has stopped in the middle of an intersection with a left-hand turn (not unusual) and the doors are open and people are pouring out (unusual). Immediately my spidey-sense is activated. I whip out my trusty camera phone to catalog the action that is sure to come. Outside, it appears that our train and a Bentley had an unfortunate meeting of metal.

A quick investigation revealed the source of the problem: The Bentley driver (from all appearances, a rich housewife possibly borrowing her husband’s car) had stopped at the red light and had gone much too far over the line, blocking the entire crosswalk. This of course put her car in the path of the train as it made its left-hand turn, and consequently the train had slightly impacted her car. Of course, more investigation and possible eavesdropping was the only course of action! UCSF police was on the scene almost instantly, and the blond woman driver (No, I’m NOT making social commentary, just saying how it was!) was trying to tell the cop that the train had turned to hit her car. I’m not joking. This woman was trying to say that the train had turned deliberately into her car. Never mind the giant rails in the ground that clearly determine the path of the train in advance, she was insistently trying to scream accusations at the Muni driver. The UCSF PD officer didn’t even know what to say!

A fantastic comute to work ensued on a different line (6-Parnassus, dirtiest bus I have ridden in a while!) and I was in a wonderful mood by the time I got downtown.

Photos by Greg