He looked down, looked back up again and hit the brake.

Andrew Strube’s Ford Taurus collided with the back of a CyRide bus on South 4th Street, just north of the Jacobson Building, earlier this semester.

“I tapped on the gas, looked up and there it was,” Strube, sophomore in exercise and sport science, said of the accident with the CyRide bus. “It was my fault completely,” he said.

Strube was leaving the commuter parking lot when he rear-ended the CyRide bus, driven by Rosemary Scott.

“They were really cool about it,” Strube said of CyRide officials.

CyRide officials said an increasing number of commuters has increased the number of buses on the street, but they aren’t rushing drivers or their training.

“There’s a lot of buses out there,” said Karen Jamison, operations supervisor at CyRide.

She said during their peak hours of 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., 50 CyRide buses are in service.

Though short-handed on drivers, Jamison said CyRide doesn’t want to rush driver training.

Currently, trainees go through two phases of instruction. The first 35 to 40 hours are spent in “out of service” training where the driver will work with a CyRide instructor to get the feel of the bus, Jamison said.

The next step for trainees is to drive a normal route and pick up passengers. This “in service” training lasts 70 to 75 hours and is monitored by a supervisor, Jamison said.

“It’s pretty thorough,” Jamison said. “We’re able to tailor to the [driver].”

The training program encourages CyRide drivers to be defensive operators and prevent accidents, Jamison said.

“[With a bus] you can’t just pull over and stop on a dime,” Jamison said.

Should an accident occur, ISU police treat it like any other. “Depending on the severity of the accident, getting the bus back into service [is a priority],” said ISU Police Capt. Gene Deisinger.

Deisinger said to his knowledge, there hasn’t been any severe accidents involving CyRide in a long time.

“We would expect that they follow the same motor vehicle laws [as everyone else],” Deisinger said.

Jamison said CyRide deals with drivers involved in an accident on a case by case basis.

CyRide has not, to her knowledge, had any recent major accidents.

Strube said since his accident, he doesn’t blame CyRide, he just watches a little more carefully.