00:00My name is Brooke Jensen. I think a year and a half now yeah and I've been driving
00:14the light rail for nine months I think at the moment yeah yep. I was driving light
00:20rail on the Gold Coast for about a year part-time. Unfortunately we're always
00:25looking out for people not paying attention and we can sort of we've gotten
00:30into the the point where we just assume people aren't going to be paying
00:34attention and we'll adjust our driving for that. Of course though there are
00:41amazing people that are always doing the right thing but it's always safer for us
00:45to just assume that somebody's going to cross without looking and then we've
00:48already slowed down on approach but we're always looking for hazards we're
00:53looking for cars that may have misread the signals. On the light rail we take a
00:58lot of students to school and there's one student I've been taking here for
01:04breakfast every morning is taking a baguette full baguette and I recently got
01:12to meet him at the school when working for the Salvation Army so we've been a
01:17CMET's been working in conjunction with the Salvation Army to do breakfast club
01:22where we feed some of the kids in the morning and partnering with them I've
01:27been able to go to the school that he goes to and I said a baguette for breakfast
01:32just because I saw him on the tram but you don't get to have these
01:37conversations whilst driving so that was really fun but it's in general really fun
01:42to interact with the people that you might take to work or school every day.
01:47Definitely a few of the elderly too they'll they'll get off and come look
01:51who's been driving them the whole time and give away and I would like to let
01:55people know we really appreciate that. It's so nice to have a thank you or
02:01somebody recognize that you took them somewhere and then you took them back.
02:05Scary scary moments is mostly around people not paying attention and they'll go to cross the road and then maybe halfway through then they'll look and it's
02:17too late by then which can be really scary. Having to apply the emergency brake can be a
02:24real shock for passengers for drivers and we try to avoid pulling it but we
02:32have to if somebody's not paying attention and they're in danger. A recent
02:37thing that's occurred for me I was actually pulling into Mapleton stop and it
02:44was morning peak so trams are every five minutes so I promise if you miss the tram
02:48the next one is not far but I had my right of way to go so I had my white T and I
02:56took off to go and then scan the area there was no one there but then a person
03:03ran out from in front of the traffic that had stopped to try and get to the
03:07platform to try and get on my tram but because I've already started moving the 42
03:13tonne vehicle LRV tram it's a lot of weight so you've got to pull the
03:19emergency brake to pull it up but I've noticed her run out so we get a lot of
03:24people very stressed about trying to catch that tram that they see at that
03:28platform and I just want them to know that most of the time the next tram is
03:33not far away so if you miss it you know please cross safely it's not a big deal if
03:39you if you miss that tram yeah I did want to just add like we've seen some
03:44really good behavior from most of the kids catching transport going to school
03:50and coming home from school we just wanted to reinforce that we really
03:54appreciate when they are standing behind the yellow line waiting patiently they
04:00let people exit the tram before they start coming in all those behaviors we
04:05really really appreciate it helps keep the trams running smoothly and safely and
04:09then more more on a little bit of a negative side is just awareness around
04:14whether you've entered an area that's now dangerous so if you're crossing the road
04:18near cars near the tram please take a moment to stop especially cyclists
04:25because you're traveling at a faster speed or e-scooters you're coming into my
04:32field of vision a lot quicker than a pedestrian is so it takes us a little
04:36bit longer to notice that you're entering the track now so if you are
04:41riding an e-scooter or a bike or a pedestrian please just take a second to
04:46stop before you cross the road check both ways before you cross the road
04:50sounds simple but we just see a lot of people not paying attention so it can be
04:55quite stressful for the drivers of the light rail
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