A group of tourists, including 15 people from Milwaukee, were injured when their shuttle van crashed at Orlando International Airport, according to a local TV station.
The van’s passengers included the group of tourists from Milwaukee, ages 1 to 56. The accident took place near Terminal B.
It seems that 2011 was the year of fatal tour bus crashes, accidents that drew government scrutiny and crackdowns on the bus industry in states such as New York.
One of the issues has been the need for more stringent background checks on bus drivers. Some drivers involved in fatal accidens have been found to have criminal records, including Ophadell Williams, who was indicted for manslaughter in the deaths of 15 passsengers killed when his bus crashed in the Bronx.
Such was the case in the death of Angela Reid.
Under a settlement, a Staten Island, N.Y., bus company has agreed to pay $9,5 million to Reid’s estate, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday. Reid, a surgical nurse, died of injuries she sustained when she was struck by a bus driver with an extensive criminal record, Rufus Jones.
Needless to say, Jones was less than forthcoming when he applied for a job with Atlantic Express Transportation. When he filled out his job application, he “forgot” to mention that he had 31 criminal convictions and a suspended New Jersey driver’s license, according to the News.
Jones was driving an express bus in Manhattan when he went through a red light at 34th Street and Madison Avenue and struck Reid, who was on her way to her job at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, the News reported. Reid, the 34-year-old mother of two sons, was crushed and sustained devastating injuries, which resulted in surgeries and the amputation of her right leg.
Nonetheless, she died about three months after the Jan. 21, 2009 accident. In an interview with the News, Jones expressed remorse for Reid’s death but said his criminal record played no part in the accident.
But her employer, Atlantic Express, is paying the piper, to the tune of $9.5 million, via the settlement approved by in the Bronix Supreme Court. The money will be placed in a trust fund for Reid’s sons Dante, 9, and Devante, 11, according to the News. They now live in Florida with their father.
After several multiple-fatality bus crashes, authorities in New York state and New York City have just completed a one-month crackdown on illegal buses, the New York Post reported Saturday.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/hitting_brakes_hard_LHz8Mb63oP1rHv5lpcTsuN
The tabloid said that the New York City Police Department and state transportation officials had put 46 interstate buses out of commission for “everything from safety violations to mechanical issues.”
As part of the sweep, three bus companies that were transporting passengers out of state, but didn’t even have a license to operate, were immediately shut down, according to the Post.
The crackdown came in the wake of a startling number of tour-bus accidents this year, including one that killed 15 people on their way to Chinatown in March.
The New York safety-inspection crackdown wound up with 150 summonses being issued to bus companies and drivers, the Post said.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., made a great point a few weeks ago when he suggested that there should be a national solution to stem the rash of tour bus accidents in 2011. He pointed out that there have already been more bus crashes this year so far than there were all of last year.
Several tour bus accidents made headlines just this weekend and the end of last week. Early Saturday morning in Pennsylvania, 14 people were injured and had to be hospitalized when a Greyhound bus en route to St. Louis overturned on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
http://www.yorkdispatch.com/penn/ci_18680805
Just days before that, on Thursday, Nickelodeon “iCarly” star Miranda Cosgrove broke her ankle when her tour bus got into an accident on Interstate 70 in Illinois. The 18-year-old had been on her way from a show in Ohio to Kansas, where she’d been scheduled to perform Friday. Cosgrove had to cancel her summer tour because of her injuries.
But those accidents pale when compared to the March 12 tour bus crash in the Bronx that killed 15 passengers. That bus was transporting people back from a Connecticut casino to Manhattan’s Chinatown.
Many of these accidents happened very early in the morning, just before or right about dawn. In several cases, police suspect that drivers fell asleep behind the wheel. But why has this issue surfaced so often this year?
With the recession taking its toll, perhaps bus companies have laid off drivers, meaning those who are left have to work longer shifts. Or perhaps drivers, financially pinched, are volunteering to do more runs even if they are tired, to pay family bills.
In New York State at least, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trying to address the problem. His administration late last month, via the state Department of Transportation (DOT), launched a crackdown on charter bus companies, suspending the operating licenses of eight ”poor performing” tour bus operators.
http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/07252011CuomoSuspends8CharterBusCompanies
“The eight companies are being directed to ceaseoperations under their New York licenses within five business days,” Cuomo’s administration said in a press release. “All of the companies have failed three or more roadside inspections of buses or drivers in the last six months of intensified state enforcement or failed their scheduled semi-annual bus inspections or received a federal out-of-service order.”
In a statement Cuomo said, ”The frequent, and at times flagrant, violations of state and federal safety regulations by charter bus companies has gone on for too long and put too many lives at risk.”
The Administration said that its action would pull some 100 buses off New York state roads pending a full DOT review of the companies’ vehicle fleets, drivers’ records, and company finances before the suspensions can be lifted.
The reviews will take place at the expense of the suspended companies, according to the press release. Failure to achieve full compliance will result in the permanent revocation of the companies’ right to operate in New York.
Some of the failing operators have separate interstate operating licenses issued by the federal government.
“DOT is working with the U.S. Department of Transportation to assure that sub-standard operators that lose their New York licenses cannot continue to operate in New York under a federal license,” the press release said.
DOT is also adding 20 new inspectors to step up enforcement of bus industry regulations and carrier compliance. The additional staff will perform about 11,000 safety performance inspections of high-risk operators and 2,000 safety audits of poor performing motor carriers annually, according to the Cuomo officials.
These enforcement activities are expected to generate $2 million in civil penalties annually.
In the past four months, DOT has performed 3,000 roadside bus inspections with 542 drivers and/or vehicles being placed out-of-service. This compares with 615 buses inspected at roadside in all of 2010 — a nearly a 400 percent increase.
DOT also conducts more than 160,000 routine bus-safety inspections annually, and works with the State Police to conduct more than 120,000 surprise roadside inspections of buses and trucks annually.
These carriers were suspended: Best Trails and Travel Corp.; Party Ride; A & W Tours Inc.; Touch of Class & Coach Inc.; Silver Star Limo Co.; Zoladz Limousine Service; Long Island Limousine Service Corp.; and Big Apple Bus Charter Inc.
At least New York is making an effort to address the problem head-on. It would be nice if other states did the same.
There have been a seemingly endless series of bus crashes this year, with the latest one happening in Texas, sending 19 people to the hospital.
Friday morning’s accident took place on Interstate 35 in San Marcos, Texas, according to the American-Statesman of Austin. The bus was going north at 4:15 a.m. when it went off the road. The driver “overcorrected,” the paper said, and the bus tipped over on its side.
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/nineteen-people-hospitalized-after-bus-crash-1576191.html
As a result of the accident, one woman who sustained head and neck injuries was placed in a medically induced coma. She was on life support. In addition, a 4-year-old girl had to have her leg amputated. Nineteen people were hospitalized.
The bus was en route from Dallas to Laredo. It is owned by Mares Bus Lines Inc. of Dallas.
The Austin newspaper reported that the bus company during the past two years had received a number of citations,m including some for driver fatigue and unsafe drriving, from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
There’s been a third fatal accident involving a low-cost bus line that serves Manhattan’s Chinatown, so let’s hope federal regulators fast track their report on regulating this industry.
The latest catastrophe took place Tuesday in Virginia, when a bus headed from Greensboro, N.C., to Chinatown went off Interstate 95 and rolled over onto its roof. Four people died in the crash and 54 were injured.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/us/01bus.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=fatal%20%20bus%20crash&st=cse
The bus driver, Kin Yiu Cheung, 37, of Queens, N.Y., was being held in jail on charges of reckless driving. Police believe that he fell asleep while driving. And, no coincidence here, his employer, Sky Express, has repeatedly been cited for fatigued driving.
In fact, according to The New York Times Sky Express has received 46 violations for fatigued driving in the past two years. The bus operator has had four accidents during that period, including one where was a fatality or injury, The Times reported.
Back in March there was another fatal accident involving a low-cost bus line that serves Chinatown. A tour bus went off Interstate 95 in the Bronx, N.Y., killing 15 people. That bus was traveling from a Connecticut casino to Chinatown.
That crash prompted the National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB] to take a look at how low-cost bus operators are regulated, a study that is still in progress. The NTSB is supposed to issue a report on its findings later this year.
The sooner the better, because fatal bus accidents in recent months seem to be almost a weekly event.
This industry obviously needs more stringent regulation, and the sooner that happens the more innocent lives will be saved.
A tour bus crash killed eight Americans near Cairo Sunday when the vehicle crashed into a truck filled with sand, according to The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/world/middleeast/27egypt.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
There were 21 Americans and two Egyptian tour guides hurt in the accident, which happened at dawn when the bus was on the way to the Abu Simbel temple from the city of Aswan.
The Egyptian army took a dozen of the injured passengers to a hospital in Cairo for medical treatment, the American Embassy said in a statement.
The Times reported that the tour bus took off at 5 a.m., and hit the parked truck in the dark of the night. Egypt is a dangerous place in terms of vehicular accidents, according to the newspaper, because its two-way roads often have one lane, there aren’t many street lights and traffic laws aren’t enforced.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is proposing that new buses be equipped with seat belts, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The federal body is asking for public comment on the safety-belt proposal, and also wants feedback on whether seat belts should be installed on existing buses.
The Journal cited NHTSA figures that said 36 people died in bus accidents in 2008, and that bus travel is one of the safest methods of travel.
But data shows that lap-and-shoulder belts drop the risk of a being killed in a crash that involves a bus rolling over by 77 percent, according to The Journal.
The regulation that the NHTSA is proposing wouldn’t include transit buses that are used for local transportation.
Public transit officials in Denver are trying to figure out why there have been a slew of fatal bus crashes this year, according to the Denver Post. http://www.denverpost.com/technology/ci_14861061
In just a four-day period in April, four people were killed in accidents involving Regional Transportation District buses. That is more fatalities from bus accidents than any full year from 2005 through 2009, The Post says.
According to research by the newspaper, in 2005 and 2007 there were no deaths stemming from accidents involving RTD buses.
RTD has been trying to stem the tide of accidents by having its supervisors deliver safety briefings before drivers go out of the garage in the morning.
In the three lethal accidents in Denver, only one RTD bus driver has been cited for any violations or wrongdoing. Tidenekiyalesh Hawariyat, 30, ran a red light April 3 and crashed into two cars. Two people in a Volkswagen Rabbit were killed, and about 12 others were hurt, including Hawariyat and the driver of one of the vehicles she hit.
Police pressed charges against Hawariyat, namely two counts of careless driving resulting in death and 11 counts of careless driving resulting in injury.
In the other fatal accident, a 78-year-old man was hit by a bus in Aurora as it pulled out of a bus stop. And the night after that, a bicycle rider crashed into an RTD bus. That 42-year-old man died of his injuries the next day.
Because of the rash of fatal accidents, RTD is giving more than 1,000 bus and light-rail drivers a one-hour refresher course on safety procedures, according to the Post.
Denver Transit Officials Try To Figure Out Reason For Recent Spate Of Fatal Accidents
Public transit officials in Denver are trying to figure out why there have been a slew of fatal bus crashes this year, according to the Denver Post. http://www.denverpost.com/technology/ci_14861061
In just a four-day period in April, four people were killed in accidents involving Regional Transportation District buses. That is more fatalities from bus accidents than any full year from 2005 through 2009, The Post says.
According to research by the newspaper, in 2005 and 2007 there were no deaths stemming from accidents involving RTD buses.
RTD has been trying to stem the tide of accidents by having its supervisors deliver safety briefings before drivers go out of the garage in the morning.
On the three lethal accidents in Denver, only one RTD bus driver has been cited for any violations or wrongdoing. Tidenekiyalesh Hawariyat, 30, ran a red light April 3 and crashed into two cars. Two people in a Volkswagen Rabbit were killed, and about 12 others were hurt, including Hawariyat and the driver of one of the vehicles she hit.
Police pressed charges against Hawariyat, namely two counts of careless driving resulting in death and 11 counts of careless driving resulting in injury.
In the other fatal accident, a 78-year-old man was hit by a bus in Aurora as it pulled out of a bus stop. And the night after that, a bicycle rider crashed into an RTD bus. That 42-year-old man died of his injuries the next day.
Because of the rash of fatal accidents, RTD is giving more than 1,000 bus and light-rail drivers a one-hour refresher course on safety procedures, according to the Post.
