Causes Of School Bus Accidents
Has your child, or children, been hurt in a school bus accident in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Connecticut or anywhere in the United States? Do you know what rights you have and what benefits and forms of financial compensation you and your child may be entitled to under your states personal injury laws? You should seek the help of an experienced auto accident attorney handling school bus accidents in throughout the country including Hawaii, Washington, Washington D.C., Vermont, Maine and Wisconsin.
Contact our team of school bus accident lawyers. They will analyze your case free of charge and fight to get you the medical benefits and financial compensation you and your children deserve. Proudly protecting the rights of injured children across the U.S.A. including Illinois, Arizona, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Minnesota, Iowa and Idaho.
Across the country many parents walk their children to the school bus stop and wait for the bus to arrive. When waiting with your child, or children, at the bus stop or drive behind a school bus on your way to work, it’s hard to imagine such a large, highly visible vehicle being involved an accident. And school bus drivers should be doing everything they can to prevent an accident. They are supposed to go through rigorous training because they’re responsible for transporting so many young passengers.
A school bus accident is not a particularly common occurrence. In fact, the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA) ranks school buses as the safest form of transportation when it comes to getting children to and from school. However, there are several causes that seem to be at play in the vast majority of bus accidents. Some of the most common causes of school bus accidents are:
Distracted Driving
By now, it should be clear to all drivers that it’s not a good idea to multitask behind the wheel—just look at some of the US government’s distracted driving statistics if you’re not convinced. For people driving themselves in passenger vehicles, avoiding distraction may boil down to putting away all electronic devices. School bus drivers, on the other hand, are carrying dozens of young passengers who could create any number of distractions. Children are generally taught not to distract their bus driver as part of school bus safety training, but even just one or two disruptive children could create a significant distraction.
Driver Fatigue
There’s no way to mandate that bus drivers get a good night’s sleep before taking kids to school in the morning, and tired drivers are more prone to making errors. Accidents can happen when a tired driver fails to check their blind spot, takes a turn too sharply or too widely, goes too fast, or fails to observe any other rules of the road.
Mechanical Errors
Sometimes a school bus crash is not actually the bus driver’s fault; school buses are supposed to undergo regular maintenance to ensure that they’re safe, but when an inspection slips through the cracks or the person performing the inspection misses something, a bus may experience a mechanical error while on the road. Not too, a school bus in St. Louis crashed due to a crack in an air brake valve that caused the brakes to fail, and another bus from Louisville, Kentucky crashed due to a blown out tire, sending 35 people to the hospital.
Other Driver Errors
Sometimes it’s not the bus that causes an accident, it’s another driver. High school student drivers are at the highest risk for causing an accident simply because they have limited driving experience and may not recognize the precautions they need to take around school buses. As school buses are such massive vehicles, they typically experience limited damage in an accident with a smaller passenger vehicle, but students on the bus can still be injured because they’re not wearing seat belts.
Responding to School Bus Accidents
Knowing that school bus accidents are relatively rare is little consolation if your child is injured in this type of accident. Should a school bus accident occur, it’s important to make sure your child receives medical attention first, and then to identify the accident cause in order to hold the responsible party accountable for their negligence—whether it’s the bus driver, another driver, or even the school bus manufacturer. Talk to an experienced Michigan bus accident attorney in your area to learn more.
Contact A Texas School Bus Injury Attorney
Our team of school bus accident lawyers handle school bus accident and injury claims in all states including California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Contact them if your child has been injured in a school bus accident anywhere in the United States.