Bus Accidents

A bus full of passengers was en route to Paul Revere Middle School on the morning of Tuesday, August 26, 2014 when it reportedly slammed into a tree, leaving nearly everyone on board—18 of its 22 passengers—with minor injuries. All injured parties, including the driver of the bus whose identity has not been released to the public, were taken to area hospitals for examination and treatment.

The bus was owned and operated by a private transportation company by the name of Nancy’s Bus Service. The company is said to have failed to register with the state of Texas’ Department of Motor Vehicles as it is required by law to do, and its registration has been lapsed for at least the past five years. The company’s registration was pulled by the DMV in 2009 due to a lack of proper insurance, and has never been reinstated since. Nancy’s Bus Service has also remained uninsured for the past two years. The ID number painted on the bus is reported to have a connection to a bus company operating under a different name, and it is unclear at this time whether this name is a DBA for Nancy’s Bus Service or if there is some sort of fraud involved. Representatives of the company have been contacted, but have refused to comment regarding the incident at this time.

The bus operator reported that the bus experienced some form of mechanical failure that allegedly caused the bus to suddenly swerve to the left and into a tree on the roadside near the intersection of Briar Forest Drive and Tanglewilde Street in Houston, Texas.

The principal of Paul Revere Middle School, Hafedh Azaiez, was contacted regarding the crash, as there was some concern at first that the school had contracted with an unregistered transportation service to provide rides for its students. However, Mr. Azaiez stated that the school has absolutely no ties with Nancy’s Bus Service, and that parents have occasionally been known to use private transit companies to shuttle their children to school when families live beyond the boundaries of district bus routes or otherwise do not qualify for district-run bussing.

Some students on board the bus at the time of the crash reported that the driver behaved strangely just prior to the crash, possibly indicating a medical emergency or ailment of some kind. However, the driver maintains that the crash was caused by a malfunctioning of the bus’ machinery, and has not reported feeling ill or injured prior to the accident.

A Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) bus crashed into a car late in the morning of Tuesday, August 12, 2014, in Franklin, Massachusetts, leading to more than a dozen injuries to the people inside the bus. A late-model sedan swerved out of its lane into the oncoming lane that the MBTA bus was driving in, causing the bus to crash headlong into the sedan. Both car and bus came to an abrupt halt after the impact, and the car came to a final stop turned halfway around on the nearby sidewalk.

The driver of the sedan in question, 30-year-old Stephen Griswold, was deemed by authorities on the scene to be driving while intoxicated and was taken into custody following the crash pending further investigation. Griswold stated that he felt dizziness overcome him just prior to the accident’s occurrence. Witnesses stated that they saw him exit his vehicle and enter two nearby area businesses before officers arrived at the scene of the accident and took him into custody. It is unclear whether authorities suspected Griswold of using alcohol or illegal or prescription drugs at the time the accident took place.

Witnesses stated that they saw Griswold driving in the wrong lane more than 15 yards prior to colliding with the passenger-laden MBTA bus. In spite of the many injuries he was allegedly responsible for due to the accident, Griswold himself sustained only minor injuries and was taken in for questioning without stopping at a hospital for evaluation first.

Witnesses also reported that the emergency exit at the rear of the bus may have been compromised in some way, as responders were forced to pull passengers out of the vehicle by way of the side door. The front door was allegedly jammed shut due to damage sustained in the crash.

Of the 34 people on board the bus at the time of the accident, more than half reported injuries and more than a dozen were taken to area hospitals for treatment by ambulance, including the driver of the bus. Passengers reported a very hard impact, with many of them sailing through the air as the bus was hit, and nearby witnesses of the accident reported seeing glass shatter everywhere, from both bus and sedan alike.

Two double-decker tour buses were involved in a serious accident in Times Square on the afternoon of August 5, 2014, reportedly leaving 15 or more people wounded in the collision. Most of the injured parties were pedestrian bystanders who were struck by one of the buses as it plowed into a sport-utility vehicle, then crashed into another two-tiered tour bus. The bus then knocked over a traffic light and came to a stop up on the walkway next to a popular discount ticket booth. Several of the injured were hurt when the traffic signal was hit by the bus, causing it to fall over and strike them where they stood, although none of the injuries are reported to have been critical.

The bus that is reported to have caused the accident was being driven by one William Dalambert, a 58-year-old man from New Jersey with a lengthy history of registration suspensions as well as multiple license suspensions in his past—nearly two dozen in combined total. The most recent suspension was less than one year ago, although the license had been reinstated by the time of the accident. One question that has come of this is just how a person with such a dubious driving record can be given a job as bus driver.

Dalambert was arrested on a charge of impaired driving after failing a field sobriety test just after the accident, and he acquiesced to a blood and urine test later that day to determine what, if any, illegal or prescription drugs may have been in his system at the time of the accident. Results of the preliminary tests came back clean, although the full-scale toxicology report has yet to be released to the general public as of this writing. Dalambert has since been released pending those results.

Dalambert alleged that a problem with the bus’ brakes was to blame for his loss of control over his vehicle. However, inspectors for the Gray Line bus company—owners of the bus Dalambert was driving at the time of the accident—were unable to find any issues with the machinery of the bus that would lead to said supposed brake failure.

The Gray Line bus company is a subsidiary of Twin America. Twin America stated that they intend to cooperate fully with investigators and are currently reviewing their rules with regard to driver hiring and vehicular safety.

A tour bus was involved in a tragic accident last week when it encountered a load of steel pipes that had spilled onto the highway when the truck that was carrying them jackknifed. Four people were killed and dozens were injured in the incident.

The crash took place on Interstate 10 in California close to the state’s border with Arizona.  The road forms the main link between Southern California and Arizona. The incident occurred at approximately 2:00 in the morning, in the midst of a dark stretch of highway in the desert. The big rig was carrying the pipes on its flat bed, and apparently had attempted to pass a slower vehicle that was driving ahead of it. When it tried to maneuver around the vehicle it struck the center divider, causing its load to spill onto the highway in both the eastbound and westbound directions, into the path of oncoming traffic. Some of the pipes were as long as fifty feet. The bus driver was unable to avoid the pipes in the road and struck them, which sent it rolling off of the freeway shoulder and down an embankment, where it overturned. Two other vehicles also collided with the pipes, including a Chevrolet Suburban that was heavily damaged.

The bus was operated by El Paso-Los Angeles Limousine Express, and was travelling to Los Angele from El Paso, Texas. It was approximately three quarters through its route and had just stopped in Phoenix to switch drivers. Authorities have indicated that there were 33 passengers onboard, including the mother of a 12-day old baby who was nursing her infant at the time of the incident. Ana Perez says that the two passengers seated next to her died in the crash. “The driver was trying to avoid it, but it was too late,” she said in an interview.

According to Jerry Rosenbaum, president of the bus company, the driver was “a little banged up.” He continued, “No one has made any allegations about the bus’ maintenance or the bus driver’s actions being contributing factors of this accident.” The company has been operating along the route since 1966 and has a safety, driving and inspection record that places it in the top third of its class within its industry. “Our number one concern is the passengers and taking care of their immediate needs,” Rosenbaum said. The road was closed in both directions for several hours as a result of the accident.

The Washington State Patrol has completed their investigation into a year old bus accident that took place on May 6, 2013 in Kirkland, Washington. Authorities are suggesting that the driver of the bus may be charged with vehicular homicide in the incident. The accident caused the deaths of two people.

The charges that the investigators are suggesting be filed against driver Aleksandr Rukhlin include two counts of vehicular homicide as well as a single count of hit-and-run. Rukhlin was driving his Route 535 bus northbound on Interstate 405 at 9:33 p.m. when he exited the highway and ran through a red light at the intersection. His bus struck a Ford Escape sport utility vehicle  that was travelling across the overpass, then continued across the road, down the onramp and back onto the freeway.

Passengers who were onboard the bus at the time of the accident reported screaming at the driver to stop, but he ignored their pleas and continued to drive north on I-405 for another three quarters of a mile before they were able to force him to pull over and stop the bus.

Shortly after the accident, the driver was interviewed by the Seattle Times, and said, “I just pushed on the pedal. There was nothing, I couldn’t stop the bus. The air pressure was fine – I don’t know why it didn’t work. I was confused … I lowed down the gear, and it couldn’t stop the bus.” Investigators say that the bus, a 2008 Gillig Phantom had recorded nearly 300,000 miles at the time of the accident, well within its anticipated 500,000 mile rating.  A police investigation determined that the bus was mechanically sound.

The accident killed Robert and Elizabeth Rotta of Bellevue, who were driving in a car driven by their son, Ken Rotta. The younger man suffered a broken rib in the incident. His parents had been married for 54 years.

There is still no information as to what compelled the 54-year old driver to act as he did. According to investigators Rukhlin was cooperative during the course of the investigation, there were no mechanical problems with the bus that he was driving and all of the signs and road signals were operating correctly at the time of the accident. The bus was operated by Community Transit. First Transit subcontracts that company’s operations and maintenance needs.

The driver of a Cincinnati Metro bus narrowly escaped with her life the other day following a stunning accident that could have resulted in multiple fatalities had passengers been on board.

Surveillance video has just been released showing the chain of events that took place during the accident, which occurred last April.  In the accident, the Metro bus was travelling down Gilbert Avenue when the driver of a passenger vehicle that was turning off of Chapel Street rammed into its side. The force of the impact made the larger vehicle cross over the dividing line in the roadway. The bus driver was able to avert missing another vehicle that was headed towards her on the opposite side of the road, but then struck a sign before veering towards a building, where it struck an overhead door. This impact was not enough to stop the bus. It continued down Gilbert, dragging debris behind it. It missed additional vehicles before veering across Lincoln Avenue and finally crashing into a home. The bus driver was injured and required hospitalization.

A witness to the scene, Ernest Jenkins, said that he thought that the end result was going to be much worse than it actually was. “The driver lost control of the vehicle, hit one building, ricocheted off, then hit another building across the intersection,” he said. “When she tore off and hit that, I thought she was a goner.”

The driver, whose name has not been released, was reportedly on her way back to the bus terminal to return the bus after the end of her shift. There were no passengers left on the bus. The driver suffered a broken leg and has not yet been able to return to work.

Though the Metro bus driver was not determined to be at fault in the accident, the incident has raised important questions about Cincinnati Metro Bus safety policies, which do not currently require bus drivers to wear safety belts. In this case, the driver of the bus was not strapped in, and police have indicated that her injuries might have been less severe had she been wearing one. The surveillance video from the bus shows that though she tried to hold on, she was thrown to the floor.

In a statement released by Sallie Hilvers of Metro, the organization stated, “Our drivers are not required to wear seatbelts and we have never forced them to do that, but we strongly encourage it. We are going back now and taking a look at the policy to see if we ought to be revising it.”

A Greyhound bus carrying 41 passengers and the driver was involved in a crash with a pickup truck in Western Kansas this week. One person in the pickup truck was killed at the scene, though it isn’t yet clear whether that was the driver or a passenger, and there were several passengers on board the bus who were reportedly injured, some seriously.

According to the Kansas Highway Patrol, the accident occurred early on Wednesday morning. Both vehicles were eastbound on Interstate 70 in Trego County, Kansas when the incident took place. Little is known about what sparked the accident, though it appears that the bus collided with the pickup truck, which was hauling a trailer. No information has been released as to the identity of the victim. As for the Greyhound bus passengers, sixteen of them required transport to local hospitals and three of them were injured seriously enough that they required hospitalization.

According to Patrol spokesman Tod Hileman, a team of investigators is continuing to gather information in order to determine exactly what happened and whether any charges need to be filed.  The Greyhound Bus Company sent another bus to the scene to pick up the passengers who were not taken to the hospital and to continue transporting them to their destination – the bus had been headed from Denver to Kansas City.

Greyhound is a Texas-based company and is the largest of its kind in the United States. It provides transportation to passengers throughout the United States as well as into Mexico and Canada. The company has already recorded a number of accidents for calendar year 2014, including a situation that occurred in January when a passenger attacked the driver of a bus in Arizona. That incident resulted in two dozen passengers requiring hospitalization. In another incident that took place in early April a Greyhound bus was involved in a fatal accident involving a wrong-way driver near the border between Florida and Georgia. In that incident a 91-year old man was headed the wrong way on Interstate 75 and struck both an SUV and the bus. The 91-year old was killed, as was the driver of the SUV. In that incident thirteen Greyhound passengers sustained injuries.

A school bus carrying students from Reading Muhlenberg Career and Technology school was involved in an accident that sent first responders rushing to the scene, where they found the students shaken up.  After evaluation on the scene, the students were transported to local area hospitals for treatment and evaluation.

The accident occurred on Wednesday afternoon on Route 222 in Richmond Township in Pennsylvania, near Kutztown. The students had been on a field trip to the Crayola crayon factory in Easton and were returning back to the school when their bus driver drove into the back of a vehicle that had slowed down at the intersection of Kutztown Road and Kempsville Road in order to merge into traffic.

According to Fleetwood Police Chief Steven Stinsky, when they arrived on the scene the first order of business was to ensure that the students were safe. “The most important thing for us was A, to make sure that all the students or anybody involved in the crash got the appropriate medical care and the second thing is to make sure that another accident does not happen. We always have a lot of traffic accidents here. That is why we conduct a lot of aggressive driving enforcement details in this area to help try to slow the traffic down.”

Ambulances and firefighters arrived on the scene shortly after the accident took place, and traffic quickly back up for more than a mile as they evaluated the students. Ten were taken by ambulance to area hospitals and the remaining students were taken by bus to Reading Area Hospital. Firefighters needed to pry the bus ‘s wheel away from its bumper in order to enable both the bus and the vehicle that it hit to be removed from the scene. According to Virginville Fire Lieutenant John Lubas, “We are always cutting vehicles apart up at our station. So the guys have a pretty good idea what they are doing, especially when it involves the kids. They come in and get them out right away.”

Investigators are examining the scene and taking statements from witnesses, and pending the results of their findings, charges may be pressed.

A 7-year old boy is lucky to be alive after a runaway school bus ran over him as he waited at his bus stop. The child, an elementary school student at Maryland’s Prince George’s County school district, required hospitalization after his ordeal.

According to police, the 61-year old bus driver, Arturo Roberto Harris of Clinton, Maryland, apparently needed to make a bathroom stop on Monday morning. Despite district rules to the contrary, the veteran driver left the vehicle with the motor running and children on board and left it in search of a bathroom.

The unattended vehicle ended up rolling wildly down Powder Mill Road and proceeded to roll down a steep hill located across the street from High Point High School, located in Beltsville. There were four school children on the bus at the time of the incident, aged between seven and fourteen. None of the children sustained a serious injury, though the boy that was struck by the bus required treatment at nearby Children’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. The child was treated and released a few hours after he was admitted.

The child’s mother, Georgina Tossou, said that her son is a student at Calverton Elementary School in Beltsville. When asked about his condition, she said, “He says his neck is hurting. He has some cuts under his ear, but according to the doctor, he’s going to be fine.”

Arturo Roberto Harris has been a school bus driver for Prince George’s County Public Schools for the past thirteen years. The incident has resulted in him being charged with two counts, leaving children unattended and reckless endangerment. According to police spokesman Lt. Bill Alexander, “I believe he thinks he has the bus in some sort of stop or brake mode, and for whatever reason, that bus begins rolling without him and continues on until it strikes that small child.” The child was pulled from under the bus by an off-duty police officer.

According to the school district, drivers are not permitted to leave their vehicles for any reason if there is a child onboard. In case of emergency they are trained to call the police, and in case of minor injuries they are to call the school’s transportation department.

A shuttle bus transporting a group celebrating a co-worker’s birthday was involved in a fatal crash in the early morning hours of Sunday the 23^rd of March. The vehicle was carrying its passengers back to their point of origin when it was involved in a collision with a white passenger vehicle that fled the scene. According to Virginia State Police, the accident took place just south of Washington D.C. . They were called to the scene of the accident at 3:28 a.m. and found that the incident had left one celebrant dead and required the hospitalization of 16 others.

According to witnesses, the shuttle bus was travelling south on Interstate 95 in northern Virginia’s Fairfax County when a white sedan travelling at a high rate of speed struck it. It was initially unclear as to whether the two vehicles collided or whether the sedan had cut the shuttle bus off and forced it to swerve, but later reports indicated that there was a collision. The bus driver was unable to maintain control of his vehicle and ran off the road, where the bus overturned.

Though the driver of the sedan attempted to escape from the scene, he later apprehended and arrested on a charge of hit and run. He was identified as 31-year old Raphael Manuel Barrientos of Dumfries, Virginia.

Reports indicate that the passengers on the shuttle bus were employees of an auto body shop located in Virginia who were in Washington, D.C. celebrating a co-worker’s birthday party.  The group had left Virginia shortly before midnight and were on their way back when the accident took place. According to state police, nine of the passengers were thrown from the bus as a result of the collision, with one requiring treatment for life-threatening injuries. The driver and one of the passengers suffered serious injuries that were not deemed to be life threatening, and the rest of those on the bus suffered only minor injuries. In all there were 25 people on board at the time of the accident.

The shuttle bus was operated by America Transportation. A company spokesman released no information and referred all inquiries to the police department. The man who was killed was 24-year old David Alberto Sanchez of Woodbridge, Virginia.