BANGOR – The state’s investigation into the June 27 bus accident that claimed the life of an 82-year-old city bus driver turned up no violations on the part of the city or the regional public transit system the city operates.

A report to that end was issued July 27 by William Peabody, director of the state’s Bureau of Labor Standards. The city manager’s office received the report on Tuesday.

Police say Ralph Scott was driving the Mount Hope Avenue route about 7:45 a.m. Wednesday, June 27, when he got off the bus in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart store on Springer Drive, near the Bangor Mall, and then noticed that the bus was slowly moving.

In his attempt to stop the bus, Scott first tried to get into the bus, but the door wouldn’t open because of an interlock safety system, which prevents the doors from opening when the bus is in motion.

He then got in front of the vehicle where he attempted to access a bypass button to open the door. Before he could do that the bus pinned him against another vehicle.

The lone passenger aboard the bus at the time was not injured.

Scott was taken to Eastern Maine Medical Center, where he died about 5 p.m. that day.

Although no violations were found, McNeil said Thursday that BAT drivers were provided refresher training on the operation of interlock safety systems.

McNeil said the systems, which have been used in city buses since 1996, are designed to protect bus drivers and passengers by not allowing buses to move if their doors are open and by not allowing doors to open if the bus is in motion.

“We retrained all the drivers to give them a new awareness of it because we thought it was in everyone’s best interest,” said BAT superintendent Joe McNeil. “They’ve all had it before because we give it to all new hires” as well as during annual training for all established drivers.

Leading the effort to determine what went wrong were the Maine State Police commercial vehicle enforcement and the state Bureau of Labor Standards.

Bangor police were involved in the early stage of the investigation, though the probe was turned over to state authorities to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, given the fact that the city operates the BAT network, McNeil noted.

Scott’s death marks the BAT Community Connector’s first employee fatality since the bus system was established in 1972, McNeil said earlier.

Scott began driving a bus for the city in 1986. He was a popular driver who had been driving for the public transit system for 20 years, according to McNeil. Though Scott spent most of that time on the Mount Hope Avenue run, he also occasionally filled in for drivers on other routes.

Scott’s death was the third involving an on-duty city employee since July 1, 1980, when a ramp foreman at Bangor International Airport was killed by debris after a helicopter’s rotor blades struck a hangar.

The second was an auto body specialist who died Dec. 30, 2004, when the bucket on a small loader he was repairing came down, fracturing his spine.