The Safety of Culture

WMATA loves to talk about its "culture of safety," but in the latest safety mishap, a woman jogger was hit by a Metrobus yesterday and was seriously injured.

It's a sad story, but if you aren't already flabbergasted that there has been yet another WMATA "incident," read on.

According to the original Fox story*, "the bus was equipped with security cameras, [but the] recording device for those cameras was missing from the vehicle. A spokeswoman for Metro could not explain why the recording device was missing."

Isn't a camera, by definition, a recording device? That would be hard to explain.

Regardless, the bottom line is we may never know what happened--whether it was the operator's fault or the jogger's--because a potentially key piece of evidence is missing. Later reports indicate a nearby police camera caught the whole incident.

While the slogan "culture of safety" plays well in a sound bite, almost everything Metro does points to an agency that is driven instead by the safety it seems to find in its own self defeating culture. A culture in which few seem accountable. A culture that appears to tolerate employees that berate passengers. A culture in which an operator would think it was OK to pull over a full bus so that he can stop at the KFC. A culture in which the chief spokeswoman loses her cool on the air. A culture that seems to let things slide until there's a major accident. A culture apparently ruled by a union determined to protect a few bad apples at the expense of dedicated workers and, more importantly, riders. A culture that lacks the leadership to take at least some responsibility for Metro's problems instead of playing the funding card for nearly every single shortcoming. A culture in which the Board plays the blame game for a politically unpopular decision to close the airport station this coming weekend. A culture that sends buses out on the roads without working safety cameras and who knows what else. The list goes on and on.

We don't know exactly what Metro is culturing, but as the "incidents" and "situations" pile up, it would appear to be highly contagious. (h/t @hostagehoosier & @ahwahoo2006)

*This language has since been removed from the Web story without explanation by Fox. Here's a screen grab of the Google search result clearly showing the language was there. The information is still in the broadcast version of the story:


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A good experience with WMATA customer service (nutgraf)
Metro: Open meeting laws don't apply to conference calls (Examiner)