How does the song go? The wheels on the bus go round and round…erratically down the road? CBS News New York reported, on Sunday, September 13th, a New York City MTA bus driver was wasted behind the wheel of his bus on Long Island. The man, 52-year-old Alexander Copeland, was arrested for a DWI after barreling down a suburban parkway restricted to cars. I knew there was a reason I never take the bus.
Witnesses said he “appeared dazed behind the wheel.” Thankfully, no one was hurt. Pedestrians and other drivers on the road were spared and there were no passengers in the bus because—wait for it—it was his day off work. It’s your business what you want to do on your days off but showing up to your place (or in this case, vehicle) of employment intoxicated probably isn’t the best game plan. What happened to running errands and catching up on Netflix?
Busted on the Bus
Multiple calls were made to the police and when state troopers finally pulled Copeland over, he willingly obliged them a sobriety test and failed. His blood alcohol level was 0.20 percent which more than twice the 0.08 legal limit. His charges include reckless endangerment, DWI, unauthorized use of the vehicle (apparently one of the perks of working for Metropolitan Transportation Authority isn’t being able to take the buses on joy rides at any given moment) and just your standard traffic violation. His poor wife had to come pick him up from the barracks, where he’d apparently sobered up and apologized for his transgressions. I think this punishment might involve more than a slap on the wrist but we won’t know until his court date which is scheduled for later this month.
We All Make (Sometimes Bizarre) Mistakes
Copeland has been working for the MTA for almost 20 years and appears to have a clean record up until this point. So who knows what he was going through that fateful Sunday. Perhaps he was enjoying a few (or 12) cold ones, dozed off, then awoke and mistakenly thought he was due at work? Or maybe this was a big middle finger to the MTA? According to a few anonymous commenters on the CBS New York story about this, he’d given a church congregation a ride from the chapel to a picnic in Eisenhower Park and had a little too much liquor at the festivities. Of course, this wasn’t verified as fact but it makes sense. What’s a church picnic without enough hooch to get the bus driver hammered? Not the kind of church picnic I’d like to attend, that’s for darn sure.
One incident like this doesn’t make someone a horrible person, or even an alcoholic. Copeland’s incident, while in poor, poor judgement, wasn’t as bad as the Floridian Uber driver getting caught drunk driving, and had still been regularly working for the transportation company despite multiple DUIs. Or the drunk pilot who’d been fraternizing with flight attendants, endangering a plane full of Norwegians this past August. I might be singing a different song if Copeland had injured or, God forbid, killed someone. But he didn’t and this was a first time offense, so I say this guy gets suspended but maybe not terminated. Hopefully this will be a lesson that he needs to take things down a peg at the ole’ church picnic. What would Jesus do? He certainly wouldn’t get behind the wheel inebriated.
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