A woman is asking Greyhound buses to introduce passenger lists after finding out her daughter may have been exposed to tuberculosis on a trip, the Windsor Star reported Oct. 4.
Health officials said a woman travelling to Detroit Aug. 31 carried a mild form of the infectious disease and may have exposed 42 passengers to it.
Without a passenger list, health officials are turning to the media for help in tracking down the passengers for TB tests, Windsor-Essex County Medical Officer of Health Dr. Allen Heimann said.
Greyhound passengers can be identified if they paid by credit card, but there’s no record of the names or destinations of the people who paid by cash.
It’s surprising the issue of a passenger list hasn’t come up before.
Planes and trains have, for a long time, had lists with travellers’ names and contact information.
There’s no reason buses should be treated differently from these other forms of national transportation.
A passenger list would be a good insurance measure in case of an unfortunate event such as possible disease contraction or a roadside accident.
In the latter case, people would have the consolation of knowing for sure whether their loved ones were on a bus that had been in the accident.
Greyhound’s recent bouts of violence—a man was killed and decapitated July 30 and another man was stabbed in the chest in an unrelated incident Sept. 21—have caused many to question if there should be stricter safety measures for bus transportation.
Some measures might include using metal detectors and having extra Greyhound personnel on every bus to help the driver deal with unexpected situations.
But these measures open up a can of worms regarding how far security measures should go and merit further consideration before any of them are implemented.
A passenger list though, while not making bus travel any safer, would at least provide an extra precaution in the event that passengers need to be contacted regarding an infectious disease.
Passenger lists cost money to implement but would set Greyhound on its way to prioritizing passenger safety.
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