Where to Find a Safe Bus Ride?

Our medical friends at the hospital in Shell received 23 people injured in a bus rollover at Rio Negro. Two of the crash victims didn’t make it, but tireless efforts by the medical team helped save the lives of others.

It’s a sobering part of any drive in Ecuador to see the baby-blue hearts painted on stretches of highway to mark fatal traffic accidents. The most jarring perhaps is a spot between Pifo and Papallacta that commemorates a bus accident. Now a similar memorial will likely appear on the road near Rio Negro.

Where do you go to find a safe bus ride? The same week that our medical folk put their hands of healing to work on the injured, I came across a couple more bus stories.

The I-can’t-believe-it story from the BBC webpage showed a young couple, Dani Graves and his fiancee Tasha Maltby, dressed in black, goth fashion. Click here to see the story.

Put off one bus in Yorkshire, the pair was asked not to board another. Reason? Miss Maltby wore a collar and was tethered on a dog leash held by Mr. Graves! The bus company’s operations director said primary concern is passenger safety, and welcomes the goth couple to ride his agency’s buses, but “we are asking that Miss Maltby remove her dog lead before boarding the bus.”

Well anyway . . . there’s also the “women only” busses in Mexico City. This is a measure aimed toward less crime and less women sexually accosted during their commute to work. Did you know that last year 14 percent of rapes in Mexico occurred in the transportation system?

One woman tells how she can dress more nicely to ride on the women-only busses. She has fewer concerns about being groped, catcalled or other abuses.

Again, an interesting news note, but not answering my underlying question: can I get to my destination alive?

We work very hard at keeping our women safe, our workplace safe, our wallets safe . . . our world safe. But ultimately –and this is what I hate about our world – we fail. You need only look at the headlines to see that there is no completely safe place.

Not in this world, only in the next. And only if we have assurance that we will be with God. This is my daily antidote to fear—God’s loving care over me and my family. And it is only iron-clad in assuring me as long as I believe that no matter what happens, God has allowed it. And that He cares for me.

Whether I take great risks or play it safe, I am only assured of two things– this moment and eternity. So I join the Psalmist in saying “Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are: help us to spend them as we should.”