bus driver freaks out at guy with "mild autism"

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That is true. However, I think it is unacceptable to use profanity in an open public place like that regardless in what situation you are in. Just as uncomfortable as this guy may have made the driver feel, I would feel uncomfortable sitting on that bus and hearing the driver offload his negative emotions out in the open. Negativity is always disturbing and it is unfair for other people to have to face it accidentally like that. A smarter thing the driver could have done is to ask someone who was sitting near him to tell the man politely to stop doing whatever was irritating the driver. Another thing he could have done, if possible, would be to make a polite announcement.

Employer and Employee is not the main concern here. The concern is remedying the situation so as to prevent an injustice occuring. The law is simply a vehicle created by human society to deliver what they suppose is an acceptable form of Justice (with some obvious exceptions). However the fact is that Justice is more important than Legal procedure or indeed any socially-recognised precedent and if people have good reason to be unsatisfied with the end product then they have every right to talk deeply on the subject matter at hand with all the information that should be expected for an acceptable judgement.


And? A public employer is not a paragon of justice, and our voice on this planet is not only muted but we as a voice are indeterminably moderate by most standards on this site. We are not mad ranters, and nothing on this site has been mad ranting. You sir, have I feel somewhat exaggerated the fear of overreaction. If I were to look at even the most extreme of us (with certain dubious exceptions) we are not in any way given to a herd mentality that can be remorselessly psychopathic or given over to deluding others (even though according to NTs we pay for it dearly (which arguably, is correct).

Indeed and these are all questions with major legal ramifications. We cannot allow ourselves to be given over to fear of an overzealous public. Despots feared that in the past when they thought of democracy. Even normal men on the street did so. Yet in the end we must give people the power to decide on the circumstances of an act requiring redress or which is illegal, otherwise we are simply shunning open justice, a prerequisite of the continued functioning of a free society.

Aye. I thought you needed reassurance that I wasn't trying to be an activist judge with bad faith.

From the person who recorded the YT video:

I'm neutral on this until an investigation gets both sides' stories. Talking like that comes across as talking about sex, and having a stranger do that right behind your head when you're driving an otherwise empty bus might might be very threatening and make you wonder what they guy is going to do next. I.e. assault the driver? Masturbate into the back of the driver's head? If the driver was a woman she could probably have gotten the guy arrested for those comments.

Also, has the driver previously been assaulted while driving, and is he still PTSD'ed from it? Being alone on the bus with one person makes him more vulnerable, too.

Don't get me wrong, I hate when odd behavior that is innocent gets people in trouble. I've been thrown out of stores because someone thought I was drunk (and no, I wasn't drunk or high, just uncoordinated and weird by nature), and have had many innocent comments get taken the wrong way. But the driver may have truly felt threatened, rather than just annoyed

Does it matter what gender really? Are we still living in the stone age where society is on a knife edge and people instantly shoot down men with mostly harmless psychological problems just because a woman calls foul?

Unfortunately, it does matter. I'm not saying it's right, fair, or makes sense, but it is the reality of the world.

No it isn't. Bigoted standards are not set in stone. This isn't the sine function we are dealing with. It's an opinion, a common delusion that doesn't fit realistic expectations. It's driven by base emotion and pseudo-instinct. Fortunately we are dealing with people who have every ability to not act like savages who use base appeals to emotion.

But as is the case for any proposed standard for equality, it can only happen when most people are practicing it or are in agreement with it.

If men are to be no more or less threatened by sexual comments, then it follows that the male driver would have been just as justified in having the passenger arrested as a female driver would be.

Sexual stuff is experienced by most as intense because that's passing on your genes we're talking about, here. It's high stakes stuff, biologically. Being absorbed in a play he's writing might have made the passenger distracted, and could also be the source of sexual comments, which he might not see as possibly being disturbing or even threatening to others. To him, it's just more stuff in the story line, and nonsensical/bland too, by the sound of it. I don't write stories like these.

Can you hear yourself? When an angry public is crying, "he should be fired for that!" how can you possibly say that employer and employee is not the main concern here? Where is the justice for the driver who faces the loss of his job if the mob is given its druthers?



I'm not pointing a finger at anyone here. Many of us are, indeed, capable of moderation. But let's be clear, 4 of the 8 posts before my first post on the subject directly addressed the question of sanctions that should be levied on the driver, and three of them explicitly called for him to be fired. I did not make my initial post in a vacuum.



I suggest to you that justice meted out by "the people," writ large is almost never just. The best resolution of a dispute is the resolution reached between two parties alone. The next best resolution is that which is facilitated by a neutral third party. The imposition of a resolution by an impartial arbiter follows behind these two. But the public is rarely well positioned to make judgements.

Why do courts exists? Why do we not mete out justice in the Assembly? It was long ago recognized that the will of the public can be manipulated, corrupted and bought.

But it is important to realize that absent an administrative law appeal of disciplinary action, or a civil suit or criminal complaint for assault, this is not a matter for the law. This is, at least for the moment, a management question for the employer.



I'm actually quite in favour of activist judges. I am a firm and faithful believer in the "living tree" doctrine.

Sounds like the bus driver was somewhat antagonized/irritated into freaking out like that. I'd be the same if I had to work all day and had some guy talking about 'creepy' things behind my head too; and after attempts of telling him to quiet down, he wouldn't just shut up.

I notice the name Matthew Taronno keeps cropping up and accusations that this was all staged in the Youtube comments.

The autistic guy was talking loud on the phone and the bus driver was wrong to shout like that. Two wrongs don't make it right.

That incident would scare me too if I saw it. Real life drama scares me.

So here's an update on what has happened so far: link
Some summary points from the article:
- OCTranspo found the "incident appears genuine"
- the driver has been fired
- the driver says he was spit on 2 days before, and he lost his mother and wife to cancer within the last year, so these are possible explanations for why he might have been touchy in general
- the union intends to appeal the firing

- one thing I find confusing about the article is that earlier it says he is 56, and later 25 (not that it really matters)

You make a jump from moral concern of the public to instantly saying that the public will perform a mob hanging. If you cannot understand the fact that the concern is for the person who was abused and for preventing future abuse then that's your problem, not mine.


Damn right, and their reasoning given the conditions was based on the valid idea that a bus driver should not by any means bully his customers. Not long afterwards I think people calmed down a bit and began thinking rationally about what extraneous circumstances might mean the busman should be fired or not.


The law is rarely just when the public doesn't know what is going on. Furthermore you are mixing up the public with a mob.


Which would mean the driver and the man driven off the bus.

You talk very paranoiacally about the public as if it is one mass. I am sorry but public individuals can provide rational opinions.

And so indeed can a court. But I never argued public justice. I argued the public can force the law to decide whether a case must be answered or whether the law has done enough.

I am a firm believer in not allowing the fungal and self-serving hypocrisy of activist law to corrupt a tree. Judges are not democratic institutions. They don't have a right to bind the public to self-interested judgements on their own behalf.

I hope the bus driver was fired as well. I'm so glad someone caught that on camera!

I see very few people expressing the least interest in preventing future abuse. They are intend on avenging an abuse, but that's not the same thing. When I see someone expressed some real and meaningful concern for preventing future abuse, I, for one, will stand up and cheer.

So far, I have seen none of that in this thread.



But that does not change the context in which I made my initial post. Neither does it invalidate my argument that there is a privacy interest between employer and employee that must be respected.



Once the public starts demanding a specific result, it has crossed the line from legitimate inquiry to an attempt to impose mob rule. The decision of whether or not to fire the driver lay with management, not the public.



So far as I am aware, the young man has expressed no desire for any resolution. In fact, he has expressed regret at the gravity of the action taken by OC Transpo. When the victim of an abusive tirade says that the result was excessive, perhaps we bystanders need to rethink our responses.



How many times do I have to repeat: "I have never denied that people have right to talk about it, and indeed they should talk about it."

Of course individuals can provide rational opinions. I like to think that I have been very rational (and moderate) in my views. But there is a difference between discussion and a call for firing.

This is not paranoia--this is about trying to understand where privacy interests lie. It might well be that the public altercation has completely eradicated the driver's right to privacy in his relationship with his employer. But I reject that proposition.



"Whether the law has done enough," sounds to me like a public review of judicial decision making. (If that was not your intent, then please ignore what follows.)

The moment that the public can second guess the result of a process, then the rule of law is gone. The public is most assuredly the correct arbiter to decide whether or not the law needs to change to prevent a perverse result in the future, but the public should never be in the position of imposing its will by reversing a judgement already made, or prejudicing a judgement yet to be made on events that are complete.



Judges should never be democratic institutions. The surest, best guarantee of individual liberty is the jurisdiction of the court to give effect to individual's right in preference to the majority's will. When judges are accountable to the public, then they are compelled to respond to the self-same pressures as the legislature, making the notion of separation of powers laughable.

The legislature always has the last word. If the court pronounces upon the state of the Common Law, the legislature can overcome that through statute. If the court pronounces statute to be unconstitutional, the legislature can amend the constitution. Given that power, it is wholly and entirely improper to chip away at judicial independence.

You're talking to him. Now would you like me to quote where I said that or are you going to back down from that statement?


The connection between bus driver and his employer is a side issue. The main issue is between the bus driver and the customer. Could you quit trying to peddle the idea that a company somehow has a final say on how to deal with their employees? Company law isn't feudalism visagrunt.

I dispute that false assertion you made at the end. A company does not have final say on what is just and what is not just. You can't have fair justice if you give someone complete rule. Furthermore you are wrong. Mob rule occurs when they in a fit of passion impose a result by force. Your idea of mob rule is wrong. The public has a right to an opinion. That's called free speech. Are you threatened by that?

Really now? Well I aint opposed to that, but exactly what people judge on the basis of evidence that you do not know? Also, give me the link.

Yet the instant they assert that a particular thing should be done, even when not using force, you somehow find a way to say that this is wrong. I am sorry but a discussion doesn't occur without assertions.

Aha, an appeal to emotion. I am sorry but an assertion that calls for a firing can be as much a part of any discussion as anything else.

This is about the facts, and now you deny that the public should have no facts about the altercation that occured! I am sorry but the fact is that I doubt the man's age or home address has been included, so there is no real intrusion in to him of any importance. However the facts surrounding the case cannot be simply washed away because of some invisible right to privacy between an employee and an employer.


The Public's involvement in justice is not temporal dependent. What this is is an inability to comprehend a public that can react with any sort of restraint, a thing that arises out of babying privacy rights that need not exist that allow the law to be perverted because of unneeded secrecy.



This is ironic coming froma man who defending the laughable lack of separation of powers in the Swedish legal system by referring to my comments as anglocentric and agitprop because... because... because you wanted to be right.

Even more hilarious is the belief you have of trying to equate the legislature and the public. The legislature is voted in my the public. The government is there to serve the public. If it does what is supposedly a bad job then the public will intervene eventually. That's a fact of reality.


And so you try to make an argument that Judicial activism is okay? I am sorry but if a judiciary contravenes the statutes and constitution of a country on the basis of personal interest then it is outside the pale and deserves to be swept aside.