Shelby Butler says the sun was just beginning to rise on May 15 as she went on her way to work, travelling through an area of Calgary she doesn’t usually frequent.
While stopped at a red light at the corner of 11 Street and 18 Avenue SE around 6:15 in the morning that day, Butler’s light turned green and she began to make her way into the intersection.
That’s when her dashcam shows a Calgary Transit bus blowing through the red light in the intersection, just a few feet from clipping the front of her vehicle.
“I saw the bus barrelling towards (the intersection) and I saw the light start to turn red,” Butler explained. “I started to go a little bit to see if (the bus) was going to slow down, but (the driver) didn’t even try.”
Butler then posted the video on Facebook.
“I was really just interested in seeing how the public would react and a shocking amount of them were defending the driver.”
Butler’s dashcam video is one of two videos — taken less than two weeks apart — depicting Calgary Transit buses failing to abide by traffic signals.
Another one taken by Norman Tang shows another city bus cruising through a three-way stop sign at Coventry Drive and Coventry Hills Way.
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Calgary Transit says it’s now reviewing both incidents.
“Concerns like these are taken seriously and investigated,” Calgary Transit said in a statement to Global News. “If there are instances of unsafe or dangerous actions, we will follow up with the individual employees and take appropriate action.”
While the city has experienced an unprecedented amount of danger on its roads this year, Butler is concerned she came so close to adding to those statistics.
“It definitely would have done some damage to me, but honestly, there’s passengers in there (and) my biggest concern was pedestrians, really,” Butler said.
“It could have been a parent with a stroller, or kids, (an elderly person). They would not have gotten out of the way in time.”
President of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 583, Mike Mahar, says watching those two videos also left him feeling concerned.
“We understand you’ve got four or five hundred transit operators out at any given time and unfortunately, they make human errors as well as everyone else,” Mahar said. “So they don’t happen all day long, but when they do, of course they’re a concern.”
Mahar says the union will represent each bus driver during Calgary Transit’s investigation, but each incident like this is very unique.
“Sometimes if someone runs a red light, it may be by a fraction of a second. (It could be) because the driver is able to see a clear intersection and it was safer to coast through than it is to jam on the brakes and have some passengers fall or bang their head.”
Mahar says each bus is also equipped with cameras that will aid the investigation, which typically only takes a few days to come to a conclusion.
Situations like this arise a “couple times a month,” according to the union.
In a statement, Calgary police say they have not received any reports on these particular incidents.
“We can only investigate incidents after receiving official reports… we cannot begin investigations based on videos shared with us by third parties or on social media,” the Calgary Police Service (CPS) said in a statement.
“As always, the CPS encourages and expects any driver within the city to obey all signage and traffic lights.”
Mahar says both Calgary Transit and the ATU hold operators to a high standard, but noted the number of people defending the operators in the online posts.
“These things happen. We try to mitigate the frequency of them to make sure they don’t happen any more than they do.”
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