Countywide : Bus Driver’s Safety Record ‘Amazes’ Her

Bus driver Judy Miller has watched more than 2 million passengers file in and out since she first took a job behind the wheel of an Orange County bus. And that whole time, through 20 years and 400,000 miles, not a single fender bender.

The Lake Forest resident is the first Orange County Transportation Authority bus driver ever to rack up two decades of service without a traffic mishap.

“I guess that’s amazing isn’t it?” said Miller, 43. “It’s hard for me to believe myself.”

OCTA officials estimate she has pulled over to curbside stops 3 million times since beginning work in August, 1973. She recently received a safety citation.

Much has changed since Miller began driving for the fledgling Orange County Transit District, then only in its second year with about a dozen drivers and just 20 buses, she said.

Now, Miller is one of 800 full-time OCTA drivers, and the county’s bus fleet has swelled to 700 vehicles, OCTA spokesman John Standiford said.

Fares during her tenure have gone from 25 cents--”We called it the two-bit bus line,” she says--to $1. The streets have become far more congested, but the passengers, she said, remain for the most part friendly.

Each day Miller weaves her way through the legions of cars that clog Pacific Coast Highway, her route beginning in San Clemente at 5 a.m. and, at one point, stretching up to Long Beach.

In all, she spends nine hours a day driving, and rarely does one of those hours pass without someone cutting her off or tailgating. The secret to staying safe--and sane--is to keep cool, she said.

“I don’t get mad. I can’t,” she said. “I can’t let myself get irritated, because if I did, by the end of the day I’d want to commit suicide. I just let it go.”

Familiar faces and kind words help the day pass too. Regular passengers will exchange pleasantries and the occasional Christmas gifts, and whole families get to know Miller as she ferries them to work or home. Sometimes work doesn’t end when Miller gets home, either.

“Sometimes my relatives will call me and ask me to drive them when we all go somewhere. I guess that way they know they’re in good hands.”