The MBTA has launched an investigation into why one of its safety inspectors was allowed to leave the scene of an accident — and duck immediate drug and alcohol tests — after he crashed his agency-issued SUV into a stopped bus and injured a passenger, the Herald has learned.
The 44-year-old safety inspector, who has worked for the T for 20 years, has been suspended without pay while the agency broadens its probe to determine why his direct supervisor failed to follow T procedure and show up at the 9:36 a.m. Tuesday accident in Cambridge that sent a female bus passenger to the hospital for neck pain.
It was not until roughly 4 p.m. ?that the safety inspector, who had skipped out of work, was tracked down at a relative’s home and taken by T officials for drug and alcohol testing at the agency’s clinic, according to the MBTA. A report by transit police never mentioned a field sobriety test being conducted.
The T has refused to identity the safety inspector or say whether he failed his drug and alcohol tests.
“After giving a statement to a Bus Operations Supervisor and Police, the employee was allowed to leave. This should not have happened,” T spokesman Joe Pesaturo said in a statement. “An investigation is underway after established procedures for accidents involving MBTA vehicles were not followed.”
Pesaturo said T rules require that a supervisor from the employee’s department report to the scene and transport the worker to the clinic for “post accident screening.” In this case, he said, a safety department supervisor — not a bus operations boss — should have carried that out.
“The employee should have been brought to the MBTA Medical Services Clinic for a mandatory post-accident drug and alcohol screening. When the breakdown in protocol was discovered, the MBTA made several attempts to locate the employee, who had left work in his personal motor vehicle,” Pesaturo said, adding that the safety inspector was suspended Tuesday night after T officials located him and took him for the screening.
The safety inspector, who could not be reached for comment yesterday, was driving an MBTA GMC Yukon when he rear-ended a Route 1 bus on Massachusetts Avenue, near Clinton Street. The bus driver told police he was stopped at a crosswalk, waiting for a pedestrian to cross, when his bus was struck by the Yukon, denting the rig’s rear bumper.
Transit Cop Michael Carney stated in his report that the safety inspector was driving the Yukon “behind the MBTA bus and made contact with the bus’s rear bumper,” injuring a passenger and damaging the truck’s front bumper and grill.
