There was a run of a driverless MTA bus in Brooklyn at about 12:30 am this morning. Instead of using the usual set of sensors, cameras, and computers to produce a driverless vehicle, this bus was rendered driverless when the driver exited the bus and forgot it was in neutral, sending it careening down the street, backwards, hitting cars and ending up in a church fence. Oops.
The Queens No. 58 route bus stopped on Palmetto Ave. when the driver stepped out. During the bus’ roll down the street, it hit about a dozen parked cars but thankfully didn’t hit any people, though there was one close call.
A man changing the headlights on his mother’s car had to jump out of the way of the bus, and experienced minor injuries. Eventually, a metal fence at St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church on Knickerbocker Ave. stopped the bus’ destructive romp.
Witnesses took video of the bus, thinking at first it was just reversing, then noticing that nobody was at the wheel:
Yikes. Remember, bus drivers, the N on the gearshift does not mean “No Moving.”