Vigilant driver comes to aid of customer

Christian Dumont is an experienced driver.

After 9 years of driving STM buses, he has now spent the last 11 as a paratransit driver. “I love paratransit,” he says. “We build ties with customers, which is different from the bus and métro.”

It was precisely that experience that raised alarm bells for him when, earlier this summer, one of his customers was nowhere to be seen when he arrived to pick her up. “She wasn’t there waiting for me. I rang her doorbell as usual and got no response. Then, I knocked at the back door. Still nothing. My gut told me that something wasn’t right.”

In this type of situation, paratransit drivers usually report the customer absence to our control centre, then wait for new instructions before continuing along their route. But this time, Christian also told them how reliable this customer usually was and that he was concerned for her well-being.

Trusting Christian’s intuition, the control centre dispatched one of our operations supervisors, who went on site and informed one of the customer’s loved ones of the situation. Once that person arrived, Christian’s worries were confirmed: the customer was found lying on the floor, and emergency services were called to the scene.

Christian has not personally seen that customer since the incident, but at the time of this interview, he had just learned that she had started travelling with us again. “I was so happy. She must be doing better,” he said.

Good habits and good opportunities

Providing door-to-door service gives our drivers the chance to talk to you, even if just for a moment. This builds relationships over the course of your trips, which lets them get to know you better and, importantly, learn your habits and routines.

As you can see from this story and its happy ending, when you use our paratransit services you also get vigilant drivers who care.

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