Horror on I-95

[marmar]

from the NY Times:




A tour bus barreling south for Manhattan overturned at high speed on a highway in the Bronx early Saturday and was sliced open by a sign stanchion in a shriek of rending metal that hurled riders about like rag dolls. Fourteen people were killed and 18 were injured, 5 of them critically, the authorities said.

Victims of the accident, which happened about 5:30 a.m. on Interstate 95 just across the Bronx line from Westchester County, were returning to Chinatown on a chartered bus from the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Conn. Some described grisly scenes of mayhem: at least one person decapitated, others maimed, people hanging upside down, victims gashed by flying glass, screaming in the darkness and struggling to get out. Some were thrown out on the ground, others were trapped in a maze of metal.

The crash cast a grim light on a nocturnal New York City subculture of overnight gamblers, many of them older Asian and Hispanic people, who take cheap buses from Chinatown to casinos in Connecticut and New Jersey, play the slots and tables for a few hours and catch an after-midnight bus home, usually sleeping on the trip back and often arriving just in time to get to return to work.

The driver, Ophadell Williams, 40, survived. He told the authorities that his bus was clipped by a passing tractor-trailer, which sped away, an assertion that the police later said was under investigation. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/nyregion/13crash.html?hp

[hedgehog]

1. It may be time for (gasp!) governmnet regulation of these buses.

We had a spectacular accident last fall when a bus driver took a wrong turn out of the Transportation Center, drove past several warning signs and into a low railroad bridge. He'd already gotten lost getting to Syracuse.

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/at_least_two_dead_possibly_mor.html

[DiverDave]

2. I have driven

through that area, at that time.
I can believe that a TT did that, they drive NUTS.
If I can see the truck or trailer number, I drop a dime on them.
Hopefully the new CSA2011 rules will get the idiots out of the trucks.

[marmar]

3. Yup, I used to live in New Rochelle, close to the Westchester/NYC border.....

...... so I used I-95 often, unfortunately. And sadly, that stretch was one of the better parts. Once it becomes the Cross Bronx Expressway, well, you get some idea of what hell must be like.

[hedgehog]

5. My husband is an excellent driver, and it was a family tradition for him to

take the high school senior on a tour of colleges. It became a family joke describing his reaction to traffic around NYC.

[csziggy]

7. An early report said a tractor trailer had been reported by a motorist

As "cutting off" the bus just prior to the accident. That fits with the bus driver's version in this story. On the second page of the link in the OP they say that a tractor and a trailer have been seized by authorities, so maybe they have the tractor driver.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

11. That first report was in the initial 911 call.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

9. I've driven there many times and I hate it. It feels like a free for all.

[A HERETIC I AM]

12. Best of luck with that.

"Hopefully the new CSA2011 rules will get the idiots out of the trucks."

I heard a bit on NPR today - a police spokesman saying they were looking for the truck they think either sideswiped the bus or hit it in some fashion. He said the bus driver swerved to the right to avoid contact and lost control and the trucker carried on, leaving the scene.

When I heard that my first thought was the truck driver saw what happened in his rearview and thought "fuck this, I'm outta here".

My second thought was the trucker had no idea what happened behind him and carried on. He probably knew he tagged the bus, but it is possible he didn't see what happened behind him if he was concentrating on the road ahead.

The fact is, the CSA program won't get "the idiots out of the trucks" because, I am sorry to say, I am involved in an industry overwhelmed by idiots.

So as I said in my subject line, Best of luck with that.

The vast majority of American truck drivers are courteous, polite, conscientious, professional and do their jobs so well you never notice them. What you notice are the ones standing out and they are the small percentage of the whole. It is just that when they stand out, they are doing so by operating their vehicles in such a way as to make you take notice.

For the next few days, try and count each and every heavy truck you see while driving. I am talking everything bigger than a UPS "package car". Every dump truck, cement mixer, 6 wheeler, 10 wheeler and 18. If you actually make an effort to notice the ones you never do, you might be amazed at how many professional drivers are out there every day, making your life and all our lives possible on a daily basis and operate their vehicles in such a way as to make as little impact as they can on your day and your driving.

If the real fault lies with an asshole who crowded the bus drivers lane and/or hit him and continued on, then he is a dirtbag and I hope they find the guy and string him up. If however it is really a case of the bus driver overreacting and over correcting, then that is a tragedy and resulted in a horrible accident.

But it was an accident.

Thinking a rules or procedures change will solve one of the larger problems of the transportation industry - poor driver education - is thinking wrongly.


And for the record, it is my opinion that the poor driver education in this country has as much to do with automobile drivers as it does with professionals. We do an utterly piss poor job in the USA of preparing people for undertaking the driving task and do damned little if anything to further that education. If we treated driving like we treat piloting aircraft, we would go a lot further in reducing accidents overall.

[DiverDave]

16. your response shows you

dont know CSA at all.

Points follow you from job to job, stay on for 3 years and WILL, with enough of them, get you FIRED and unable to get another driving job.

So, yes, these new rules WILL remove bad drivers from the road.

I just took the updated training on this, so no BS.

[aquart]

4. We were just talking about a bus driver picked up for DUI the other day.

His passengers were stranded for hours. But we were saying how that was better than what could have happened. This is what could have happened.

[BillyJack]

6. I understood it to be that some tractor-trailer driver that left the scene

caused this. Why would you bring up DUI of SOME OTHER bus driving accident?

:shrug:

[aquart]

13. Because of the speed the bus was going when it hit the pole.

Or whatever it was it hit. How does a truck make you increase your speed?

[Shagbark Hickory]

8. Not long ago I was thinking about the horrific crashes you hear about with these buses ..

If you've ever been stuck behind one though, it's hard to imagine they'd ever pick up enough speed to end up like that.

[pinniped]

10. I can't assign any blame in this case, but some of those casino tour bus....

drivers are maniacs. On I-80 going to Reno from SF, I routinely encounter these casino specials driving faster than regular cars, sometimes in the #1(fast) lane, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the snow! My friend took the bus before and said the driver was a maniac. My dad was on one of these casino specials and it wiped out.

Well, this subculture also exists in San Francisco's Chinatown. Drive there on the weekend and you'll see a bunch of people waiting around Commercial/Clay and Kearny st. This likely takes place during the week, too.

[krispos42]

14. Like a can of Spam hit by a cleaver

[DeadEyeDyck]

15. RIP