Atlanta bus crash tragedy leading to new standards for road signs and bus safety
In March 2007, a bus carrying the Bluffton University baseball team from Ohio crashed in Atlanta. I had a minor role in the team of Georgia and Ohio lawyers representing team members and the families of those who died.
The families of those young men were determined that some good might come of their tragedy. This week, we have seen progress on two fronts toward making it less likely this would happen again.
- Highway sign standards change. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced a new edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, incorporating changes recommended by the National Transportation Safety Board. One of the changes, in response to the inadequate marking of an HOV lane exit at Northside Drive in Atlanta, is the addition of different lane markings for lanes not continuing beyond an intersection or interchange to give drivers more warning that they need to switch lanes if they don't intend to turn. CNN ran an investigative piece about the signage problems in the Bluffton case. I was one of several Atlanta lawyers who spent days poring through DOT exit signage design and construction records.
- Bus safety standards in the works. This week the U. S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee unanimously passed a bill that would require the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to study to what motorcoach safety requirements should be improved within the next three years. Last month DOT Secretary Ray LaHood directed NHTSA to prescribe standards for motor coach occupant protection that accounts for frontal, side and rear collisions, as well as rollovers, and provide standards for the same items pending legislation. In the Bluffton case, there were passengers ejected and killed due to lack of seat belts and safety glass in side windows. We soon realized that if the same bus, manufactured in Belgium, had been purchased in Turkey (or almost anywhere else in the world) rather than the U.S., it would have had these safety features not required here.
Sometimes we lawyers and the clients we represent, while focusing on bad things that have happened, help bring about safer conditions for others in the future. It reminds me of a bumper sticker someone put up in the kitchen at our office alluding to the Ford Pinto problems of the 1970s: "If this car does not explode on impact, thank a trial lawyer."
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School bus accident data
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported the following statistics on school transportation accidents between 1996 and 2006.
* 1,536 people died in school transportation-related crashes. Compare that with 41,059 traffic fatalities in the United States in 2007 alone.
* An average of 40 people per year died in school bus accidents.
* 72 percent of school bus accident fatalities were occupants of other vehicles.
* 20 percent were non-occupants such as pedestrians or bicyclists.
* 7 percent were school bus occupants.
* About 57 percent of crashes involving a school bus involved another vehicle.
* In 53 percent of all crashes involving fatalities to occupants of a school bus, the principle point of impact was the front of the bus. The least common point of impact was the rear.
* Of 41 fatal school bus crashes between 1996 and 2006, 17 involved the front of the bus, 6 involved the right side, 3 involved the left side, and 3 involved the rear.
* Each year, 23.5 million children ride 450,000 school buses to school.
* Those 450,000 school buses travel about 4.3 billion miles annually.
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Trucker on cell phone crashes into school bus, kills a child
A Florida truck driver admitted that he was on his cell phone yesterday when he slammed into a school bus, killing a 13-year-old student. According to a report by Austin Miller of the Ocala Star-Banner, the school bus, which had stopped to let children off , had its warning lights on and stop signs out. The truck driver said he never saw the bus. He failed to stop for it and rammed the school bus forward 294 feet. The bus was fully engulfed in flames.
See our recent posts on cell phone distractions and the absence of seat belts on busses.
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Tour bus seat belt legislation blocked ... again
On March 2, 2007, a tour bus carrying the baseball team from Bluffton University in Ohio crashed on an Atlanta freeway. I'm on the team of lawyers in Ohio and Georgia involved in representating members of the Bluffton baseball team and their families
An issues in the case is the lack of seat belts. Some of the young men on the bus were killed or seriously injured when ejected from the bus. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that contributing to the severity of the accident was "the motorcoach's lack of an adequate occupant protection system." If there had been seat belts or safety glass on the side windows, they would not have been ejected and presumably would not have died. Similar tragedies have occurred elsewhere around the country in recent years.
The same bus purchased almost anywhere else in the world would have belts in all passenger seats. I found an identical bus listed for sale in Turkey -- with passenger seat belts. However, neither belts nor laminated safety glass on side windows are typically found on buses in the U.S. because our federal regulations do not require them.
In 1968 when the National Transportation Safety Board first recommended that seat belts be required on all buses. Forty years later, there has been a lot of study and discussion, but not action and no law.
In the wake of this tragedy in Georgia, as well as similar incidents in Texas, legislation was introduced in Congress to require passenger seat belts in tour buses in the United States. Last winter, U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, introduced a bill to give safety proponents just what they wanted – a congressional end-run around the long-stalled seat-belt debate. They co-authored a bill calling for seat belts for passengers on new and old charter buses, and safety glass and stronger roofs on new buses. U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia introduced similar legislation in the House that would require seat belts, not just more studies.
However, as reported in an excellent article by Michael Lindenberger in the The Dallas Morning News, the chances of passage this year are fading due to strong opposition from the powerful lobby for bus operators. Lindenberger's article reports:
Ms. Hutchison and Mr. Brown submitted their bill Nov. 8. On Nov. 20, a political action committee for the American Bus Association sent a check for $1,000 to U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa. By early December, Mr. Shuster had his rival Bluffton University Motorcoach Safety Act before a House committee. He received another $1,000 early this year from the same PAC, and $1,000 more in June from the United Motorcoach Association."We welcome the Shuster bill because it calls for the most sweeping research and data collection in motor coach industry history," American Bus Association president and CEO Peter J. Pantuso said in a statement issued shortly after it was introduced.
The article goes on to explain at length the backroom machinations by which the bus industry lobbyists have continued to manipulate the process forty years after the NTSB first recommended requiring passenger seat belts on buses.
As I deal with evidence of the carnage in the Bluffton bus crash case, where bright young college athletes died horrific deaths that would have been prevented by something as simple as a seat belt and safety glass on the side windows to prevent them from being ejected from the bus, I marvel at the determination of the industry to block even the simplest safety measures for four decades.
Dump truck hits school bus in Kentucky, kills student
On a curvy road near Falmouth, Kentucky, a dump truck hauling rock from a quarry crashed into a school bus, killing a 16-year-old student. The truck driver had been working for the company two weeks, according to a news article by Roger Alford.
This incident highlights a couple of categories of safety issues I have recently encountered in my law practice. Last year I tried a case in Macon in which our safety expert was able to identify a host of safety violations in a dump truck that rear-ended our client on a bridge. The violations included broken springs and frame elements consistent with long-term wear and tear bouncing in and out of quarries. In another case, we have seen the hazards related to the lack of seat belts in school buses and tour buses.
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Bus safety article in Arizona Republic quotes your truly
A few days ago, Arizona Republic reporter Robert Anglen called me out of the blue to talk about the lack of seat belts in buses, following a crash in Utah that killed nine passengers. Here's what he wrote about our conversation:
Georgia lawyer Ken Shigley, who specializes in bus and truck accidents, says that approach is tantamount to the industry saying, "Mama didn't make me."
After the tour-bus accident in Florida on Jan. 2, Shigley wrote on his firm's Web site that the crash once again illustrated a need for seat belts on buses.
Passengers described breaking windows and being scattered from their seats after a car rammed the tour bus and the driver lost control on a highway. The bus tore through a guardrail, veered across the road and slammed into a wall.
"If the manufacturers spent as much on safety as they do on lobbyists, a lot of lives could be saved," he says.
Shigley represents survivors of a tour bus crash in Atlanta last year that killed six and injured 29 members of an Ohio university baseball team.
Shigley says if seat belts and safety glass had been installed in the bus, the outcome would have been significantly different. As it stands now, Shigley says, accidents keep happening, and the bus industry keeps blaming the government for failing to enact standards.
"If they (bus industry) embraced it and helped it happen, it would happen," he says.
The same article appears at Fox11AZ.com.
Continue Reading Questions & comments 0Florida bus accident illustrates need for seatbelts in buses
As a trial lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia, one of the tragic truck and bus accidents with which I am all to familiar is the crash of a bus carrying the Bluffton University baseball team in Atlanta last March.
A Saturday morning crash of a Van Hool tour bus operated by Endeavor Bus Lines in Florida illustrates the failure of the US government to require seat belts in passenger buses. According to the Miami Herald report, ``People got thrown everywhere.'' A similar Van Hool motor coach carrying the Bluffton University was involved in a fatal crash in Atlanta last March. Several team members were ejected and killed. (We represent six of the surviving Bluffton team members in claims arising from that incident.)
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Standards in the U.S. do not require buses to have either seat belts (except for the driver) or laminated glass in side windows that would prevent passenger ejection. If the manufacturers spent as much on safety as they do on lobbyists, a lot of lives could be saved. Almost anywhere else in the world, the same buses would have seat belts for all passengers. For example, see this ad for a used Van Hool bus in Turkey (through a broker in South Africa) equipped with seat belts for each passenger. Bus manufacturers' only excuse for failure to provide such safety equipment for protection of passengers is to argue that omission of a mandatory requirement from federal regulations implies preemption of any obligation to do so. Their excuse is essentially, "mama didn't make me do it." If courts ultimately reject the preemption defense, they have no other excuse.
I hope that the rash of tour bus crashes around the country within the past year will lead to passage of legislation to improve bus safety standards.
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Bus accidents highlight lax safety enforcement
Two recent crashes of buses transporting Hispanic immigrant passengers highlight problems in safety of charter and tour buses, particularly those providing low-priced transportation for that market segment.
Investigation of a recent Capricorn Bus Lines crash in Victoria, Texas, revealed that the company has been cited 19 times in the past three years for issues ranging from incomplete driver log books to cracked windshields and tire tread separation, and settled a lawsuit two years ago with victims in a similar wreck in Mexico for $3.3 million. The driver in the Victoria crash was tested for alcohol and drugs, but driver fatigue is apparently the prime focus of the NTSB investigation. One passenger was killed and another had an arm amputated.
Meanwhile, investigation of an Arkansas crash of a charter bus bound from Chicago to Houton has revealed that the driver had amphetamines in his system, impairing his ability to safely operate the bus, prosecutors said Thursday. The Tornado Bus Co. vehicle carrying 46 passengers and crossed a median from the westbound lanes of Interstate 40 and collided with a pickup truck in the eastbound lanes. An oncoming semitrailer truck then collided with the bus. The dead included the driver of the pickup and three bus passengers. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, Tapia was ticketed for speeding in April 2005. The agency's records, which only include the last three years, did not specify whether he was cited while driving a Tornado bus.
Whatever opinions one may hold regarding immigration policies, safety of buses operating on our highways must not be compromised. Unfortunately, safety enforcement has been lax, costing lives of both passengers on such buses and others on the highways.
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Truck-bus collision in NC injures 50
A Greyhound bus and a tractor-trailer collided Wednesday near Henderson, NC. The bus plunged down an embankment and overturned, injuring at least 29 people. The bus was traveling from Richmond, Va., to Raleigh on U.S. 1 when it collided with the tractor-trailer as a tractor-trailer ahead of it made a turn and the bus failed to slow down. The bus ran off the shoulder and down an embankment before it overturned.
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Bus safety legislation introduced
The Bluffton University baseball team bus crash last March in Atlanta has led to the introduction of bipartisan legislation in Congress to tighten motor coach safety rules. Introduced by U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R., Texas), the proposed the Motorcoach Enhanced Safety Act of 2007 would require:
• Safety belts and stronger seating systems to ensure occupants stay in their seats in a crash.
• Anti-ejection glazing to prevent passengers from being easily thrown outside the motorcoach.
• Strong, crush-resistant roofs that can withstand rollovers.
• Improved protection against fires by reducing flammability of the motor-coach interior.
• Better training for operators in the case of fire.
• Improved commercial driver training. Currently, no training is required by federal regulation.
• Strengthened motor-coach vehicle safety inspections including roadside inspections, safety audits, and state and motor carrier programs for identifying vehicle defects.
• Electronic On-Board Recorders with real-time capabilities to track precise vehicle location, and recorded data not accessible to manipulation by a driver or motor carrier.
We are representing several of the Bluffton team members in cooperation with other lawyers in several states.
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New series of articles on Bluffton U bus crash
Bus accident in Atlanta kills 2, injures 2
Reportedly the there was a mechanical failure in the steering of the bus. News reports have not identified the make or model of the bus or why the occupants were ejected. However, this is the second bus crash on Atlanta freeways this year. The crash on March 2 of a chartered tour bus carrying the Bluffton University baseball team focused attention on peculiar road design and omitted signs, as well as the lack of seat belts and safety glass in buses in the United States. (I represent several of the Bluffton players.)
It is unlikely that any passengers on the Bluffton bus would have been ejected and killed if there had been passenger seat belts and safety glass in side windows, as are required in Europe and Australia. If the same bus were purchased in virtually any country other than the US, it would have been so equipped. In that case, a web search located an identical bus for sale in Turkey 3-point seat belts at all passenger positions, but due to federal regulations that give license to unsafe design, passenger seat belts are not standard equipment on buses in the US. Recently I learned, however, that some tour bus companies have retrofitted full size motor coaches with seat belts for as little as $900 per bus.
There is no legitimate safety reason for omitting from buses the seat belts and safety glass that would prevent passenger ejection. Similar bus wrecks in other countries, where buses have such safety equipment, have resulted in all passengers emerging with no serious injuries. About the only substantive defense for bus manufacturers in these cases is the preemption defense, by which their lobbying of federal agencies may shield them from accountability to the families of those who are injured and killed. The federal regulations on bus safety are silent on these points, so lawyers in a pending case in Texas have what should be a good argument against preemption.
Charter bus crash kills 6 on I-75 in Atlanta
The unusual design of the HOV lane left exit is attracting a lot of attention in the local media. I have driven by that exit and others like it many times and wondered when it would produce a tragedy. While the state folks are quoted in the media insisting that everything complied with federal design standards, the signage for that counterintuitive exit seems questionable.
I have two children close to the age of these college students. It is difficult to contemplate the enormity of the loss these parents face. They will be able to lean on their faith, but it still must be enormously painful. I am reminded of a case we handled several years ago involving the crash of a college cheerleader van, and a crash involving a Taylor University van last year. I have often recommended to clients who have lost young adult children Lament for a Son, a book by a theology professor Nicholas Wolterstorff whose own son died in a mountain climbing accident at age 21.
Interstate charter buses are governed by Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, so it is likely any violations will be uncovered. The Georgia State Tort Claims Act allows for negligent design claims against the DOT if road design failed to comply with standards when built. But that's a subject for another day.
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Public hearing on bus safety due to bus fire that killed 23 fleeing Hurricane Rita
Much as the Winecoff Hotel fire in Atlanta in 1946 led to nationwide improvement in fire safety regulations in hotels, perhaps this bus fire will lead to improved bus safety standards. Continue Reading Questions & comments 0
