4 May 22 - 28, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents turning it in because she suspected that not enough time had passed for the problem to be adequately addressed. “There’s often been times I come back and that same bus is back out there,” Cooper said. “And I’m like, I know they couldn’t have fixed that bus that fast. … That’s how people’s buses shut off on the freeway. I had told them there’s something wrong with that bus.” According to Carter, buses undergo a thorough inspection every three to four weeks or every 6,000 miles. The average lifespan of a bus is 12 years, and though the organization has approved the purchase of 400 new vehicles, it’s unclear when those will be rolled out. Dealing with any vehicle requires main- tenance, Carter said, and it’s true that some things “are always going to have to be fixed over and over again.” But she feels confident in the ability of the DART mechanics to en- sure that no drivers or passengers are being put onto dangerous vehicles. “We know how many miles we have to drive and we know how many stops we have to make. And so sometimes, if there is some- thing as simple as putting power steering fluid in a bus, that does not take all day. That may not take long at all,” Carter said. “But the other part is, we are very well aware that our system is old.” Major Pains M artin was four months into her job as a bus driver in 2023 when she suffered a hand injury that made driving nearly impossible. It was the dog days of summer, and she was driving down Westmoreland Road when it came to an especially tricky point in her route. She needed to make a right turn onto a “small, narrow street” that was lined with cars on the right side, and had a fire hy- drant located precariously close to the curb on the left side. The speeding traffic sur- rounding the bus added to the list of obsta- cles. She’d need to make a wide approach be- fore turning tightly into the street, she thought to herself as she prepared to “exe- cute.” Martin exerted herself against the bus’s steering wheel as she began the turn, and felt a throbbing pain “shoot up her arm.” “I feel this stinging and I’m like, ‘Oh!’ So I stopped [the bus] and I was like, ‘Oh my God, my hand.’ There was a passenger on the bus and they said, ‘You need to pull over,’” Martin said. “I was holding my hand and I just said, ‘Give me a minute. Give me a minute, guys. Something’s going on with my hand.’” Martin was able to pull over for a few minutes to manage her pain, but in the back of her mind, a clock was ticking as she thought about the time frame she was ex- pected to make her stops within. She “got herself together” and managed to drop off her riders before heading back to the driv- er’s home base. By the time she located a su- pervisor to report the injury, her hand was hurting “severely.” According to Martin, she attempted to report her injury the day it was sustained, but was told by the supervisor that she had not been employed long enough with DART to make a report. “She showed no compassion,” Martin said. “She said, ‘I could give you a couple of days off,’ and she did. I came back and I went and got a brace for my hand, and then she told me, ‘You can’t drive with that brace on.’ … My hand was still hurting, but I went back to work because I had to feed my family.” Martin reached out to a DART driver union representative about the situation, but was offered little more than driving tips. A week later, Martin was able to file an injury report with a different supervisor. By that point, her hand and fingers were swol- len and in “excruciating pain.” A doctor within the DART workers’ compensation network told her she likely had carpal tun- nel syndrome. She was given oral medica- tion, but it didn’t work. A few weeks later, a doctor prescribed steroid shots for Miller’s hand, which she describes as “the worst pain ever.” Martin said the several months she was out of work to take care of her hand were an “awful time” for herself and her family. She was in pain and out of money. Martin said DART declined to grant her short-term dis- ability pay during the time she was out of work and receiving medical care. “We didn’t have a Thanksgiving, we didn’t have a Christmas,” she said. “It was just the most horrible thing I ever went through.” Martin was still receiving care from a DART doctor for her hand when she was no- tified by her supervisor — the one who she says initially declined to take a report on the injury — that she could either return to work or lose her job. She tried to fight that decision, which she believes is unethical and poten- tially illegal, but eventually had to “cut her losses.” The pain in her hand was too severe to return to work, and she was terminated. After that experience, Martin attempted to get a job with the Lancaster school dis- trict as a bus driver, but she failed the physi- cal exam for the job. After going through an evaluation, she was told her right hand lacked the strength needed to operate a ma- jor vehicle. While the Observer was not able to share further specifics of Martin’s case with DART to protect Martin’s anonymity, Carter confirmed that Martin’s supervisor should not have used Martin’s short time working with the agency as an excuse not to take an injury report. Other drivers mentioned similar stories about suffering injuries on the job and being required to jump through hoops to be seen by a doctor. Several drivers suggested shoul- der injuries are the most common among drivers because of the strain of navigating the hefty steering wheels. Garcia has had multiple surgeries on her shoulders, but getting DART to take ac- countability for those injuries has been a years-long process. The most recent ruling Garcia received from a DART-network doc- tor is that her injuries are not related to her profession. A doctor’s report describes “high-grade” tearing throughout her rotator cuff and biceps tendon and mild muscle at- rophy that has occurred since her last sur- gery. “They’re causing injuries, repeat injuries to different people,” Garcia said. “And this is negligence. We shouldn’t have to be hurt.” Over the years, Garcia has lamented to friends and family about her “torn up” shoulders. Eventually, a mutual friend di- rected her to Regina Stevens. Stevens is a se- nior workers’ compensation adjuster for a company that handles claims for municipal agencies. While the company does not work with DART directly, her name has been changed in this article because her work overlaps with adjacent agencies. Stevens told Garcia she’d take a look at her injury history and communications with DART’s workers’ compensation adjusters as a favor — there likely wasn’t much Stevens could do, she warned, other than offer some advice. What she saw was startling. Based on Garcia’s injury history and doc- umentation, Stevens does believe DART is responsible for the shoulder injuries and should be paying for Garcia’s treatment. “The red flag is the fact that they keep putting their bus drivers in these broken buses. If you know that your buses or equipment need repair, it’s completely un- ethical to continue to put the drivers be- hind the wheel,” Stevens said. “It’s an interruption in life for these bus drivers. They’re getting injured, they need surger- ies, and from my understanding, a lot of the drivers are having similar injuries to the shoulders. The shoulder is a very, very dif- ficult surgery to recover from.” Equipment isn’t always to blame for the injuries bus drivers sustain. Quintin Baker, a driver for over a decade, was left unable to drive after his bus was rear-ended while parked. Baker was standing in the bus at the time of the accident and suffered a strain to his neck and back. DART approved him for a handful of visits to the physical therapist, and in the meantime, he was off work and being paid a portion of his salary. In the weeks that he waited for his first appoint- ment, the pain intensified. “My muscles had gotten worse and my injury was a little worse, and I was barely walking by [the time physical therapy started] because so much stuff had gotten stiff and out of place,” Baker said. “[After the visits] I was like, ‘Man, I think I need some more therapy.’ Because I was still having trouble turning my torso. When you drive, you need to be able to turn to look back over your shoulder. With the length of the bus, you have to be able to see a good distance on each side of you.” Jacob Vaughn DART bus drivers switch shifts. Many drivers suffer physical ailments from driving that need treatment. Unfair Park from p3 >> p6
