A California tour bus heading back after a trip to a southern California casino crashed while negotiating a turn, injuring thirteen and bringing the number of California tour bus accidents to four in the same week.
In the latest accident, the tour bus was carrying forty passengers and was coming from the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, California. It was very early in the morning, pre-dawn, and the driver was taking riders back to Eagle Rock and Panorama City when the crash took place in Baldwin Park. According to passengers on board the bus at the time of the accident, the driver attempted to negotiate an exit ramp at too high a rate of speed and lost control. Its wheels ran into a drainage ditch on the roadside and the vehicle came to a stop immediately next to a light pole and chain link fence, which blocked the door and effectively trapped passengers on board the bus.
According to the Los Angeles County Fire Department, there were thirteen injured as a result of the incident, with most of those injured suffering minor injuries and two suffering moderate injuries.
This was only the latest incident in a week filled with tour bus accidents on southern California highways. Three crashes took place four days earlier, resulting in dozens of injuries and two deaths. In one incident a tour bus overturned after travelling at 65 miles per hour on roads that were slick with rain. One person, a 91-year old man, was killed in that accident. At the same time another bus overturned about fifty miles away, injuring 19 tourists and killing a 64-year old woman. In the third accident on that day, fourteen were injured when a bus lost control and slid across a roadway and hit a car heading in the opposite direction.
Tour bus safety has become a major issue in recent months as more and more accidents occur and investigations yield frightening results that indicate that buses are being operated by drivers that have not gotten the required amount of rest. Other safety issues include vehicles that have not been properly maintained and drivers that have not received the proper training.