Car Collides With School Bus
Tuesday, February 23, 2016 @ 9:12 AM
Photo 250News
Prince George, B.C. – The driver of a small car was lucky to escape injury this morning after rear-ending a school bus.
It happened at around 8:00 a.m. on North Nechako Road by the Evergreen Mobile Park.
Luis Gonzalez, operations manager with Diversified Transportation, says the bus was at one of its stops when it was rear-ended.
He’s not sure yet how many kids were on the bus but says none of them were injured.
No word yet on what caused the crash.
Comments
How does one rear end a bus? They’re big, they’re yellow, they stand out really well.
In the glaring sunrise the light of the sun melds in with the yellow of the bus. The contrast of the two is reduced. Again, I do not mean this as an excuse for the driver hitting the bus, just an observation that the visibility may not have been the best.
Were they eastbound? Glare could be blinding. Last week as I came up the hill on hwy 97 approaching the turnoff to the airport about 8 a.m, the sun was really blinding, very dangerous.
I rode the school bus for 18 years and every year we were run into at least twice a year people can use whatever excuse they want to but it’s mostly because the driver of the vehicle that hit us was not paying attention and now it’s even more prevalent now as incidents involving school buses are steadily increasing year by year
not saying this was the case in this instance
but
texting
putting on make up,
reading as book,
drunk
on drugs
doing anything but attentively driving your car will cause this problem
Anything is possible on the roads North of the Nechako river
Perfect skies perfect roads. Must not have been seen the bus for some reason.
Notice the shadow. Sun low in the morning sunlight. Blinded by the sun. Plus inattention.
The picture looks perfect. But the picture was not taken within minutes of the accident. However, the night was cold and there was fog in the area.
All those things considered, even with fog, one has to drive for the conditions. Unless the bus was backing up, it is highly likely it was the primary or total fault of the driver of the car, not the bus driver.
Or, could this be case of the driver doing some very important texting – then WHAM! “That bus was not supposed to be in my way!”
If that car had gone a little farther, ugly.
Looks like there is no rear bumper of any utility on the bus.
There is a metal wrap around bumper on the back of the bus. It is closer now to the bottom of the windshield. lol Also the majority of the buses also have tow hooks below.
northescambia.com/2009/09/school-bus-accident-on-highway-4
Similar type of crash in those pictures. Obviously foggy. However, cars are designed to withstand impact at their bumper level. In order for that to work properly it means that other vehicles on the road should have similar bumper heights.
I do not mean to negate the driver’s fault, however, safety of vehicle occupants in a crash such as this requires that vehicles have similar height bumper protection, otherwise it renders the situation more dangerous for the occupants of the vehicle with the lower bumper.
Most transport trailers I’ve seen will have 80% of the four wheelers out there going just under the rear bumper with their front bumper.
I’ve seen pickup trucks doing this. I don’t think they are meant to be hit bumper to bumper because the impact g-force would kill people. A transport truck that weights 60-tons or a bus that weights 10-tons is not going to budge an inch when rear ended by a small car… its like hitting a cement wall.
The drivers best hope to avoid snapping their neck is to have happen exactly what happened in the photo IMO.
Try blowing the pic up. Isn’t that a car with frost still on the front and side windows?
I can’t tell if that is a bit of frost or if it is just a little dirty. Maybe.
Iced up for sure, then glare of the sun doesn’t help matters.
Driving into work early this morning I couldn’t believe the amount of people on the road who still don’t clear all their windows. I’m amazed there aren’t more accidents because of it.
it does appear so
gopg2015– Have to agree with you. The bus should have a lower bumper installed off of the frame. Many big trailers have a couple of brackets dropped down from the frame with angle braces to stop situations like this. It would be a definite safety benefit to the person in the car. I think they should also have seat belts in the bus. Do any of the school buses have seat belts?
The bus has a long over hang from the rear wheels. If the back end was any lower it would have a ground clearance problem.
Bumpers are designed with the primary purpose being to protect the occupants within that vehicle, not to protect the occupants of every possible vehicle/bumper combination that might run into them.
Yeh, the next thing is to require all and sundry to wear helmets in case someone might bump into you as you walk to Northern Hardware from a block away. How about taking responsibility for our own actions – last time I looked, the world out there is not totally perfect.
Hey maybe: we should ask all school buses to pull some kind of hinged hang-on bumper so that those texting while driving is not likely to drive into a parked school bus and end up with a high bumper in their kisser!
I don’t think these buses are going through any large dips in the road. They can also put a couple of skid plates on the lower side of the hitch. The bumper does not have to be lowered by much. If this does not work then obviously they have purchased a Bus with too short of wheel base.
Why would any bus, semi, flatdeck, big truck have to change their bumper design?
Just don’t rear end them.
There, said my piece.
No large dips on main roads maybe but exiting and accessing roads can sometimes can be interesting requiring adequate clearance. Some of the rural roads these buses travel also require clearance.
One would be surprised what these buses go through. There are roads and school drive ways that have such a slope to them the bumpers almost touch the road due to their wheelbase. I doubt that any of the large 72 pass, school buses here have to short of a wheel base.
The g-force of a sudden impact would snap the small necks of the children inside if it had a drop down bumper. Much better that the impact is absorbed over a few feet for the safety of the children in the bus.
Distracted driving final answer.
#1 killer on the road is SPEED
#2 killer on road is DISTRACTED DRIVING
#3 killer on the road is DRINKING AND DRIVING
It was not the fault of the school bus! Armour plating the bus rear end in case a tailgater runs into it is not a solution. ICBC knows how stupid it is to follow other vehicles too closely.
Too foggy, iced up windows, bad roads, vehicle ahead stopped too quick etc etc. When you rearend somebody the ONLY valid excuse is that you were driving too close and not paying attention… ergo: your own damn fault. Learn how to drive or start walking! Nobody can seem to accept fault for their own actions anymore.
How is it possible for people who drive everyday to go decades without an accident? Simple, we drive to the rules of the road and understand that we are in control of a moving chunk of deadly machinery. I hope this driver gets a hefty fine, luckily they did not hurt anybody.
Anyone posting here. Did you ever have a motor vehicle accident and if you did why in the hell did you do that? Is it possible it was an accident?
There is no accident with a human action involved.
I just call it a vehicle incident with human error attached, LOL
But there are freak accidents.
I hope you’re not defending this driver. Yeah, I had an accident when I was a young driver, and it was totally my fault. I owned up to being at fault and accepted the fine and increased insurance costs. I also had to endure the critisim from the guy that I hit, the RCMP officer and listen to the lecture from my parents. A very humbling experience which I learned from. Luckily there were no serious injuries. But if I had been driving like I should have been, there would not have been an incident.
Almost all “accidents” are preventable. Also, almost all accidents stem from some form of distraction. All the excuses in the world does not remove fault, and ICBC states that when you rearend another vehicle you are at fault. I agree with this statement 100%. If you are paying close attention to what you are doing, then you become aware of what others around you are doing. This is the basis of defensive driving.
I am not out to “hang” this driver, but fault is fault… They hit a huge yellow bus! Thankfully it only served to injure their feelings and their own vehicle. Hoping it is a lesson learned.
Wonder how many traffic analysts and traffic members are killing themselves laughing at our sometimes silly comments.
Yes I would say it is the drivers fault. This person had an accident. Maybe this person had snow on their boots and foot slipped off of the clutch if it has a manual transmission.
We were taught when I learned to drive eons ago to be sure you bang your feet of snow off outside of the vehicle – before you get in – Just for that reason!
Obviously the bus had stopped to pick up children,,,could have been far worse.
“An accident is an undesirable incidental and unplanned event that could have been prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its occurrence.”
Obviously the driver did not act upon the reality that the distance between the bus and the car was decreasing and that an application of the brakes was required to prevent the two objects from attempting to occupy the same physical space at the same time. Why? That is so far the unknown knowable (check with Rumsfeld) in the equation.
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