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When my children were riding a bus to elementary school every day, like most parents I trusted the school bus driver to deliver them safely to school and back to our neighborhood. Usually that is what happens as school buses are generally considered the safest means of transporting children to and from school.

But occasionally children are seriously injured or killed in the process of being transported by school buses. We have successfully handled some of those cases.

School bus injury cases are not the same as car wreck cases. Lawyers handling those need to know the legal wrinkles unique…

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.

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.
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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.   

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.