A man died, and eight children were hurt in a school bus accident that happened on Tuesday, September 10, on Highway 72. The school bus driver had a heart attack and lost control of the bus, which went off of the road and flipped over several times before coming to rest in a ditch. The students that were on the bus at the time of the crash attend school in the Benton County School District. Eight children of various ages were transported from the accident scene to a hospital for evaluation and treatment. Four of the children were admitted to the hospital in serious condition. The other four children received minor injuries, for which they were treated and released.
Riding the school bus is part of many children’s school day routines in Mississippi. Parents and children do not often think about the possibility of a school bus accident, and most children will never experience one. School bus accidents are uncommon, but when they do occur, there is a risk to the bus driver as well as to every child who is on the bus. Since many parents depend on school buses to get their children to and from school, a report of a school bus accident may cause parents to question whether having their kids ride the bus is safe. Fortunately, you do not have to pull your kids off of the bus and make a plan to get them to school yourself to keep them safe. The National HighwayTransportation Safety Administration has studied school bus safety, and it has concluded that riding the school bus is multiple times safer than riding to school in a private vehicle.
You may wonder how it’s possible that school buses are a safer transportation choice for kids when most buses have no seatbelts. One factor that gives a school bus a safety advantage over a car is its size. School buses are large, and when a school bus crashes, the force of the impact is distributed throughout the entire vehicle. Passenger vehicles are much smaller and have much less area over which to distribute the force of a collision. Also, despite the lack of seat belts, the design of school bus seats separates the bus into compartments where passengers experience less movement during a crash than people riding in a passenger car experience in a collision. Finally, while anyone who can pass a driver’s license test can drive a passenger vehicle, school bus drivers undergo hours of safety training and testing before they can obtain work transporting students.
As safe as school buses are, school bus accidents do occasionally happen. Fortunately, most school bus accidents result in only minor injuries. However, severe injuries and deaths do sometimes occur. If you’d like to learn about the possibility of pursuing a claim for damages following a school bus accident, call the Mississippi Automobile Accident Attorneys at Barrett Law PLLC, at 1 (800) 707-9577, to learn more.