NYC MTA Train Operator vision requirements (DMV, live, drivers license)

[sparm]

I was just called for the pre-employment medical exam. My vision is very poor in one eye. But I wear glasses and together my vision is good enough to hold a drivers license according to DMV. Does anyone know what the vision requirements for the job are?

[Kefir King]

There must be better MTA choices than OPERATOR. "Oops" is such an ugly word when you are talking about a train.

[Schermerhorn]

Originally Posted by Kefir King

There must be better MTA choices than OPERATOR. "Oops" is such an ugly word when you are talking about a train.

Kefir King, I'm a newbie here, and I hate to interject like this to a seasoned veteran, but if the guy's dream is to drive trains, and he's got good enough vision to do it, nobody should be standing in his way.

As a person whose eyesight is lower than his, I've been denied plenty of opportunities, and have also experienced many instances where organizations from companies down to kids' sports leagues will have arbitrarily-high vision requirements that were based on what a 20/20 person thinks is bare-minimum vision, but is in fact perfectly decent.

And you'd be surprised how people who were born with low vision find a way to do things that 20/20 folks don't think are possible -- we have no perfect vision to compare things to! Remember what legendary Chicago Cubs pitcher Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown used to say about pitching while mising some fingers: "I wouldn't know if it's a handicap; I've never tried it the 'regular' way!"

[Kefir King]

Perhaps then he should consider piloting a 747 or doing microsurgery?.

Nobody denigrates poor vision but some occupations demand high visual acuity and the driving of a train with hundreds of lives dependent on one's skills seems to me to be one of them.
Have you heard what the last train operator said just recently when he turned a guy on the tracks to hamburger? "I didn't see him in time to stop the train."

Would you want a surgeon with Parkinson's or controlled epilepsy operating on you?

Some things are just common sense.