Westbrooks

In this proceeding we review a decision of the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board denying Jimmy Westbrooks’s claim for benefits for emotional injury arising out of a reckless driving incident while Westbrooks was on an assigned run for his employer, Greyhound Lines. The question presented is whether Westbrooks’s reckless driving took him outside the course of his employment. We conclude it did not.

The material facts are without dispute. On September 30, 1984, West-brooks, a bus driver for Greyhound, was driving an assigned run from Sacramento to Redding. On a two-lane stretch of Highway 99 approaching Gridley, Westbrooks entered a 45-mile-per-hour zone doing 55. He came up fast upon the tail of a car and blew his horn and blinked his lights for the car to pull aside. He then drove the bus out across the centerline to pass, apparently narrowly missing the car, and causing another oncoming car to pull onto the shoulder of the highway to avoid a collision. For this incident Westbrooks was subsequently convicted of reckless driving (Veh. Code, § 23103).

Following the conviction, Greyhound terminated Westbrooks because of the incident. Westbrooks filed a grievance, and an…