What Disqualifies Someone From Driving a Metrobus? Not Much.

CARLA A. PROCTOR should not have been driving a Metrobus on Sept. 3, the day she struck Amanda Mahnke, a 30-year-old jogger, at the corner of Connecticut and Florida avenues Northwest. She should not have been behind the wheel of a bus at any time in the past few years, either. In fact, no one with Ms. Proctor's driving record, which is studded with serious on- and off-duty accidents, has any business driving a Metrobus. That she was doing so points to a lapse in Metro policies and procedures.

A review of the record as reported by The Post's James Hohmann suggests that Ms. Proctor was a menace on the roads, with scant regard for both safety and legality.

-- In 2003, she stepped out of a bus she had been driving in Southeast to check a malfunctioning door; the bus then rolled down a hill, damaging seven vehicles and the bus. That led to lawsuits that forced Metro to pay at least $27,000 in damages.

-- A few months later, while driving her personal vehicle off-duty, Ms. Proctor turned in front of oncoming traffic. A stolen car smashed into her vehicle, and the collision sent her car through the window of a fast-food restaurant and prompted two women who were eating there to sue her. The case was settled out of court on undisclosed terms.

-- In 2004, Metro was hauled into court again on Ms. Proctor's account after she crashed a bus into the rear of a parked car in Northwest, injuring a 72-year-old bus passenger. The details of Metro's settlement with the injured passenger were not released.

-- In January of this year, a police officer charged her with driving an unregistered, uninsured car with out-of-date tags. For those alleged infractions, she faces a trial this month.

Metro's lenient policy permits drivers four on-the-job "preventable-minor"or three "preventable-major" accidents in a 365-day period before they are fired (although "gross negligence" can trigger immediate dismissal). By contrast, Los Angeles bus drivers are subject to firing after any three avoidable accidents in an 18-month span, and they can be dismissed immediately due to "negligence or grievous behavior," according to L.A.'s transit authority. As for off-duty accidents, Metrobus drivers are supposed to report them to supervisors, although there seems to be no enforcement mechanism to compel the reporting. Those policies, which are the product of a 1996 labor agreement, need to be renegotiated and toughened.

Plenty of people have checkered driving histories, some worse than Ms. Proctor's. That shouldn't make them social outcasts. But it should disqualify them from driving a bus.