Ottawa bus driver's skills raised early concerns, inquest into fatal crash hears

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OC Transpo driver Aissatou Diallo’s two-hour training session on a double-decker bus in July 2018 raised serious concerns about her ability to handle the vehicle, the Westboro bus crash inquest has heard.

Diallo’s personnel file was entered into evidence Monday, including an assessment of her lone training session on a double-decker.

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At the time, in 2018, OC Transpo drivers received a single day of training on double-decker buses with a few hours behind the wheel.

Trainees now receive a minimum of eight hours of road training on both double-deckers and articulated buses.

The inquest heard Diallo, in her training session, scored ones and twos on all of the relevant skills being assessed. A one meant the skill was performed improperly or unsafely, while a two meant the skill was performed safely, but needed improvement.

Diallo received ones on her use of mirrors, turn signals, lane changes and reactions to traffic situations well ahead of her vehicle, a key defensive driving skill known as lead time. She received twos on more than a dozen other skills.

Inquest counsel Alessandra Hollands asked Lindsay Toll, OC Transpo’s section manager of training and development, whether Diallo received any additional training on double-deckers in light of the number of issues identified in her on-road assessment.

Toll said no specific double-decker training was offered, but he suggested some of the same issues would have been addressed in other parts of her driver training.

The inquest also heard new details Monday about Diallo’s first accident as an OC Transpo driver, which occurred one month before the Westboro bus crash.

The inquest heard Diallo was driving an articulated bus into St. Laurent Station on Dec. 10, 2018 on what was a cloudy, dry day when she struck a parked bus.

An OC Transpo investigation found Diallo ascended a ramp onto the second level of St. Laurent Station. At the top of the ramp, after a sweeping left turn, she was supposed to continue straight towards the platform, but instead Diallo continued turning left, and T-boned a parked bus.

“Basically, it looks like she lost control of the vehicle and turned to the left a little too long,” Toll said in describing the incident.

The driver of the parked bus was walking towards the front of the vehicle when it was hit. The operator was thrown head-first into the steering wheel and landed on the floor. Five passengers on Diallo’s bus were injured: one passenger’s face struck a partition; another’s hit a metal seat.

The report said Diallo’s bus suffered “major front-end damage” to the windshield, bumper, driver mirror and windshield.

The police were called to the scene, but Diallo was not charged.

OC Transpo fleet safety officers found the root cause of the collision was “operator error and failure to adjust to road conditions.”

Diallo was placed on a three-week leave and required to attend a skills-building training session on Jan. 4, 2019.

That session included an on-road driving assessment. The instructor scored Diallo with two and threes, with the lower marks recorded for eye movement, left turns, cornering, lane changes and speed.

The instructor told Diallo to “use the accelerator a bit less for better control of the bus and to keep a little more distance between the bus and parked cars when passing.”

Diallo was cleared to return to work, and she was back behind the wheel of a passenger bus on Jan. 6.

Days later, Diallo lost control of Bus 8155 as it approached Westboro Station. Three passengers died and 17 were seriously injured when the double-decker struck the station’s rigid steel awning, which sliced into the passenger side of the bus, collapsing nine rows of seats.

Hollands asked Toll if, in hindsight, Diallo would have benefited from more remedial training before being returned to the driver’s seat.

Toll said that while everyone can benefit from more training, Diallo had the benefit of experienced instructors and sufficient coaching.

“She had all of the tools that she needed to be a good operator,” Toll insisted, adding: “At that moment, we assessed the situation and assessed the issue, we allocated the proper training at the time, and we felt that that was what we should go with.”

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