In the wake of the murder of New York City busdrive Edwin Thomas Monday, the NY Times has unearthed an interesting wrinkle about the city’s bus system: You don’t really have to pay your fare.

Drivers are trained to encourage resistant riders to pay their fare, but are told not to challenge them to do so, so as to avoid confrontations like the one that killed Thomas, a father of two.

So begins a story in today’s paper:

A young man waited for about a dozen other people to board the B46 bus on Tuesday morning before he got on and slowly approached the driver.

[Rob Bennett, The New York Times]

The man, who appeared to be in his late teens, mumbled something, and the driver, Alvin Jones, acting on his 15 years of experience, simply nodded and let him on. As the man walked by, Mr. Jones pressed a button that triggered a beep and recorded the fact that the fare had not been paid.

Over the course of Jones’ round-trip drive from one end of Brooklyn to the other, some 30 people were allowed to board and stay on without having paid.  

The Times says around 89 drivers are assaulted in New York every year. They’re instructed to avoid trouble with riders at all costs.

The New York City Transit Bus Operator’s Guide to Customer Service says that the agency no longer uses the word “challenge” in instructing drivers how to deal with fare evasion. “ ‘Challenge’ implies confrontation, which too often leads to hostile verbal exchanges and even physical assaults,” the guide says.

But the guide also says that “the strategy is to let the offending customer know that he or she hasn’t put one over on you,” and at the same time to assure paying customers that the driver is not ignoring fare beaters.

“The key to your reaction to fare evasion is your tone,” the guide says. “In the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., you need to put up some passive resistance.”