OK, so here is the setup:
ATLANTA - A small college in Ohio was thrown into mourning Friday after a bus carrying the school’s baseball team tumbled over the side of a highway overpass and slammed onto the pavement 30 feet below, killing four students and the husband-and-wife drivers.
The team from the close-knit, Mennonite-affiliated Bluffton University was making its annual spring trip to Florida before daybreak when the charter bus crashed, scattering bags of baseball equipment across the road and splattering blood on the overpass. Some of the athletes climbed out the roof escape hatch, dazed and bloody.
CNN ran a show titled Tragic Journey in which they talked about the confusing nature of the exit/HOV lane where the bus crashed and how if Motorcoaches had seat belts and more secure side windows passengers wouldn't be ejected (ejection is the leading cause of injury and/or death in Motorcoach accidents). The program continued with interviews from team members on the bus about their sad ordeal and grieving parents of the players that lost their lives . . . and yes it is tragic when someone is killed in an accident, especially young college students, but . . .
It must have taken 15 or 20 minutes for the program to get to the real culprit of this tragic accident, Tickle Me Elmo! No, that's not it, I just wanted see if you were paying attention. I'm guessing it was the bus driver. When the bus driver got into uncharted territory why didn't he slow down? If he saw a road sign that was not familiar to him, again why didn't he slow down? It was reported that this wasn't the first time this gentleman had piloted a Motorcoach like this one filled with the team to it's Florida spring baseball tournament.
I have no idea what the real reasons are, but I believe a contributing factor is what I'll call the "Fear Factor" effect. People watch shows like Fear Factor and see regular people flipping cars and doing dangerous stunts and never get hurt, so they assume there is no danger or assume no responsibility for the lives of either the other drivers around them and/or their passengers.
In MOST places in the good ole' US of A we drive 5 to 10 mph OVER the speed limit and when the speed limit on the highway away from the city center is 75 mph that means MOST drivers are driving anywhere between 75 and 85 mph, dang that's fast. When driving at 75 mph things happen pretty quickly.
So let's say the Motorcoach driver was driving at 65 mph, or even 60 mph what is the distance in feet it would take the bus to stop given its fully loaded state?
Assuming reaction time and brake application causing skid marks on the roadway we can determine at what point the driver applied the brakes to stop the bus, right. Well yes in theory, however the bus driver would have HAD to apply the brakes . . . Yep, that's right NO skid marks were found, the driver thought he could make the turn? OK, a Motorcoach doing say 50 mph making a 90 degree right hand turn, with NO indications on the roadway that the driver tried to slow that big ole' bus down?
What exactly happened here?
Someone needs to step up and take responsibility (like the driver) I know, I know it's sad that he and his wife passed on in the accident, but in the end isn't HE responsible for his passengers?
1 comment:
Since I unfortunatly live in Atlanta, I pass that exit frequently and it is very poorly marked. You could easily think that it was the HOV lane and not an exit. There are numerous HOV lanes on I75 in Atlanta that appear to be exits and go way over the top of the other interstates. The signage showed first one sign that said HOV lane I 75 then the next one right after that and much smaller than a regular sign says HOV exit and the markings on the exit pavement still had the HOV triangle as he he went up the exit.
Who knows what he was thinking. They have had 80 accidents there in the past few years. Now they are doing major work on it to fix the problem. It is too bad that like in aviation people have to pay with their lives to get anything done.
And you're right about speed on intertstates. Where the bus was it is a 55. The average speed there is 75-80 with people weaving in and out like maniacs.
I would have bet that fatigue would have been a factor in this accident but evidently he had only been at the wheel for one hour but who knows what amount of rest he was able to get.
What a mess.
The good thing is that the accident happened very close to the country's best trauma hospital where people are routinley brought in from the carnage of the war zone called Atlanta.
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