Are passenger buses stopped at sobriety checkpoints?
Perhaps they will be now that an Orange County Transportation Authority-contracted driver has been arrested and fired for allegedly driving under the influence while on the job.
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An Orange County sheriff's deputy responding to a report of a bus driver operating a coach under the influence the morning of Dec. 20 arrested Kerri Harper, 41, who was driving a San
Clemente route, according to the OCTA.
No passengers were injured and a replacement driver and supervisor finished the route, the OCTA added.
Harper worked for MV Transportation, the coach operator contracted by OCTA that actually fired the driver. Contracted drivers must adhere to the same zero-tolerance drug and alcohol policy as OCTA's own drivers.
As a result of the arrest, the number of random drug and alcohol tests of drivers has been increased, according to the authority.
So the next time you smell puke in an OCTA bus, don't automatically assume the stubbly guy with fingerless mittens screaming at the moon from the seat next to you was the one who'd had too much. Friends don't let their friend's bus driver drive drunk. Join MADBD, Mothers Against Drunk . . . oh, never mind.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.