The metrobus. Wikimedia.

The metrobus crash in Istanbul this past week came as a shock to just about nobody, least of all to those of us who deal with the perils of the city’s daily commute.

This city is always a disaster, a train wreck – or in this case, metrobus wreck – waiting to happen. How could it not be, with some 15 million people and counting? A precarious existence, ah! Like living in an earthquake zone. Oh, wait. We have those, too.

The metrobus is one of those peculiarly Istanbul features. Essentially, it’s a bus that operates like a subway, in that its fast and direct, transporting millions of people each day from the European and Asian sides of the city. Also, it’s above ground, and has a special lane devoted to it on the roads and highways.

What transpired this past week, according to news reports, was evidently the result of passenger rage. A security camera on the metro bus clearly shows one of the passengers, a man, attacking the metrobus driver. We see the man approach the driver, and whack him upside the head with an umbrella. The attack was so forceful that the driver actually fell out of his seat onto the floor, leaving nobody at the wheel. You can see how this could lead to problems.

With the driver down and out, and Batman apparently busy, the metrobus swerved out of control into a nearby lane, crashing into several cars. Unbelievably, nobody was killed, but at least a dozen were reported injured.

The angry passenger later told authorities that the reason why he decided to go Mary Poppins (with the umbrella, get it?) on the driver was that he missed his stop and wanted the driver to … I don’t know? Turn around? How do you turn around a speeding metrobus? The driver rightly ignored him, concentrating on the road.

How a grown man in reasonable possession of his mental faculties could miss his stop is beside the point. The thing that most of us fail to understand is, even if you wanted to hit the driver, why would you do it while he’s driving? Seems elementary perhaps, but wouldn’t you at least wait until the next stop? But I am a novice in these matters. I’ve been tempted on occasion to fight a few taxi drivers – one time a taxi driver even took a swing at me (that’s another story).

Istanbul drivers of all stripes are notoriously persnickety, and they are multi-taskers. Even during the busiest times of the day, with near-apocalyptic traffic jams, you’ll see your bus driver, or taxi driver, or dolmus driver, talking on their phone, smoking a cigarette, handing out change to a boarding passenger, and shouting at the nearest motorist, all with considerable ease. They’re just wired differently, I suspect.

Still, even their supernatural powers have a limit. Getting blind-sided by an angry umbrella is apparently pushing the boundaries, and even the most dexterous of drivers would find it a challenge to command the vehicle whilst down on the floor. If you don’t believe me, try it sometime. Or maybe you already have tried it. It is a free country, after all.

In the days following the crash, there was lots of talk on the social media. Images of the crash were shared, and people gasped in knowing disbelief. We all use the metrobus, and you could just see something like that happening sooner or later – maybe we were just shocked that it didn’t happen sooner.

Images of the nearly overturned bus, and the smashed up cars, shards of shattered glass on the pavement … and finally, last but not least, the umbrella. Somebody took a picture of the alleged “killer” umbrella. It was lying, in a sort of remorseful way (can an umbrella feel remorse? How do we know?), in the road, almost as if someone was pointing at it, saying, “There! That’s the one!”

Well, I guess we can all scrounge up a little pity in our hearts for the poor umbrella. It wasn’t the umbrella’s fault that its owner was a mental cadaver. After all, umbrella’s don’t hit metrobus drivers, people do.

When I first read the news of the crash, my wife and I discussed it. It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest that the cause of the attack was bottled-up tension. This is a city, and country, under siege, right? People living in, or near, a war zone are on constant edge. Just last week, two women were attacked by roaming magandas, one of the women for wearing shorts (which her male attacker claims offended his religious beliefs, and later changed his story to say he’d forgotten to take his bi-polar medication), and another woman in Izmir was beaten up because her male attacker claims she refused his sexual advances.

I myself witnessed a verbal altercation on the minibus last Monday. It was just after the weeklong bayram holiday, and everyone had that sullen resignation of returning to work. When I boarded the bus, the driver and a young woman were shouting at each other, to the irritation of all the sleepy, holiday-hungover passengers. The dispute was evidently over the fare, for the driver produced this price menu (I never knew the drivers carried them; I think they keep them tucked away for just such occasions) and invited the distraught woman to peruse it if she thought he was trying to cheat her.

Were all these incidents a result of war fatigue? Nah. I think it’s just the inevitable byproduce of life in an almost biblically overcrowded city. I like it actually, in a perverse way. It’s bracing, and makes for good copy. But I think I’ll stick to the minibuses. They’re so small and crowded, you couldn’t swing an umbrella even if you tried.

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James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer living in Istanbul.