PITTSBURGH — Two transit workers accused of driving their empty, out-of-service buses so recklessly side by side that they scraped together just before one crashed off a busy interstate and down an embankment were ordered Friday to stand trial on charges they endangered other motorists.

Juliann Maier and Thomas Frauens were “racing” 65 mph in a 55 mph zone before Maier’s bus veered violently off the interstate in September, Port Authority of Allegheny County police contend.

Maier’s defense attorney, Joel Sansone, called the evidence against the drivers “a joke” after the hearing and said his client was nearly killed driving a bus whose steering and brakes weren’t working properly.

“What kind of idiot would try to play tag with a bus like that?” Sansone said.

But a Pittsburgh police vehicle inspector, Officer Ryan Carr, testified he found no mechanical problems that would have caused either bus to lose control.

Sansone showed Carr pictures of a damaged stabilizing bar Sansone said his expert found on Maier’s bus. Carr testified the bar, called a sway bar, didn’t appear damaged when he inspected the bus after the Sept. 22 crash and denied problems with the brake lines.

Port Authority Officer Matt Geffel testified about surveillance video from Frauens’ bus, which appears to show Frauens, 56, waving to Maier, 46, as he passed her on the left and then holding a hand in the air and making a “buggy whip” gesture before she passed him. The video eventually shows Maier’s bus, which was in the right-hand lane of Interstate 279, moving rapidly back and forth within feet of Frauens’.