On weekdays, parents throughout Kansas entrust school bus drivers with the task of transporting their children to and from school safely. On certain days, some children spend additional time on buses when they go on field trips, or to sporting events and other school-related activities. Most of the time, school bus rides are uneventful. Unfortunately, school buses and charter buses which carry students to school activities are sometimes involved in accidents.
This May, three separate accidents involving buses occurred within a span of two days. The first incident occurred on Thursday, May 8, 2014, south of Topeka. A car crashed into the back of a stopped school bus. Fortunately, no injuries resulted from that crash. The next morning, in Smithville, a school bus went off of the road as the driver of the bus swerved to avoid hitting a car which was in the bus’s lane. Unfortunately, seven students sustained minor injuries as a result of the crash. Later that morning, in Kansas City, a charter bus was taking children to a performance when it struck a power pole. The accident appears to have been caused by a medical condition which caused the driver to swerve onto the curb. Fortunately, none of the passengers in the bus were injured, and they were taken to the performance by another bus.
If you are a parent, these three bus accidents may have you wondering just exactly how safe school buses are. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has researched this issue, and has found that school buses are, in fact, the safest way for kids to get to and from school. Their research suggests that children who take the bus to school are seven times safer than those who ride in other vehicles driven by parents, family, or friends.
While those safety statistics may be reassuring, you may still be wondering how a vehicle with no seatbelts could possibly keep children safer than a car. There are some important differences between school buses and passenger vehicles which enable them to transport children safely and keep them safe in the event of a collision. One of these differences is size. In a crash, the impact of the collision is distributed throughout the entire school bus. A passenger vehicle is much smaller, so there is less area for the impact to be dispersed through. Inside the bus, school buses differ from passenger vehicles in that their cushioned, high backed seats divide the bus into compartments. These compartments reduce the amount of movement that each passenger experiences during a crash, much like the compartments in an egg carton reduce the likelihood that eggs will break by preventing them from moving around.
Fortunately, the injuries which are sustained by students in school bus accidents are usually minor. Sometimes, though, people who are not inside of the school bus are injured or killed in accidents involving school buses. Pedestrian fatalities can occur if a person is hit by the school bus, or by another driver who is passing the school bus illegally. Other injuries and fatalities can occur if a school bus crashes into a smaller vehicle. If you or someone that you love has been injured or killed in a school bus accident, an experienced Kansas Personal Injury Attorney can help you to recover both physically and financially from your accident. To learn more about how a Kansas Personal Injury Attorney can help you to obtain the settlement that you deserve, please call our Wichita office today at (316) 264-1548.
