Brooklyn Bus Battle: You Back Up!

It's unavoidable. In life we will have arguments, debates, disagreements, altercations, squabbles, or outright fights with other people: friends, relatives, spouse, lovers, co-workers, and strangers. It is of course always more important to insist that you are right and that the other person acknowledge that he is wrong than to find a solution to an issue that is affecting both people. Okay, obviously that statement is hyperbole but people do act like that often enough such that it's a permanent problem in human relations, both individual and societal. 

Fortunately in a recent Brooklyn confrontation, there were only two bus drivers who were armed with nothing more than rising tempers instead of nations armed to the teeth and looking for a reason to start trouble. In this incident there were people around who were able to intervene, lower each antagonist's temperature, and find a solution that allowed everyone involved to maintain pride and solve the issue before anything other than  harsh words were exchanged. And that was good.

Two quarreling city bus drivers locked horns and refused to move their massive rigs in a bizarre stand-off on a narrow two-way avenue in Brooklyn, a video released Friday shows. 

SEE THIS: Two @MTA bus drivers refuse to move for 30 minutes, each one claiming they have the right of way. They caused massive gridlock traffic on 13 Ave and 39 St in Brooklyn. pic.twitter.com/rC2X1i8asq

— NYC Scanner (@NYScanner) March 19, 2021

The B35 buses, each facing the opposite direction, stopped a few feet from each other on 13th Ave. near 39th St. in Borough Park about 6:45 p.m. Thursday, but both drivers refused to budge, sparking some gridlock in the area, the video shows. 

“Back it up! Back it up!” one of the MTA drivers screamed to the other.  

“How am I going to back up? Why can’t you back up?” the other MTA worker shouted back.  

“You’re supposed to be there!” the bus driver told his colleague, pointing to the other side of the street. 

“You back it up!” “I’m not backing up!” the other driver countered. 

 “Ok we’re going to stay here then,” the first driver said. 

The driver who refused to be recorded, who was turning onto 13th Ave., ultimately backed up with the help of another MTA bus driver who was a passenger and people in the street who asked motorists behind the bus to back up and give the driver some room.

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