Bus Accident Lawyer

A female cyclist was killed while riding her bicycle on Saturday afternoon after a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus collided with her in Malibu.

The cyclist was travelling along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu at around 1.50pm when the incident occurred. According to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, the bus was driving along the highway near Peurco Canyon Road when it struck the cyclist, knocking her off her bicycle. The Los Angeles County Fire Department responded rapidly to the scene, and pronounced the cyclist dead on arrival.

According to Lieutenant Josh Thai of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department, it is too early to determine who was at fault in the incident. The circumstances surrounding the accident are currently being investigated, and the Malibu/Lost Hills station is still attempting to piece the story together from eye witness reports. Thai has confirmed that the woman who died was a 36 year old family of Latino descent, but a name has not yet been released as her next of kin are yet to be notified of her death.

In a press release, Thai stated that the Metro bus was on duty and travelling along its usual route at the time of the accident. It is unclear whether there were any passengers on the bus at the time of the incident, but the bus driver was unharmed.  It is not known whether the cyclist was wearing a helmet at the time of the accident.

The Southbound Pacific Coast Highway between John Tyler Drive and Puerco Canyon Road was temporarily closed after the accident, leading to traffic backlogs along the highway.

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Luis Inzunza responded to the accident saying that he was not certain whether there were passengers on the bus at the time of the incident. Inunza was not certain who was driving the bus at the time of the incident, but the driver has been taken into police custody and will have blood taken for drugs and alcohol as part of the routine investigation into the incident. As of 8.30pm on Saturday evening, Metro had not yet received the results of the driver’s drug and alcohol tests. Inunza has reassured the public that Metro will be conducting their own private investigation into the incident and will respond accordingly.

The cycling community is up in arms about the incident. A new law recently proposed in the state requires motorists to maintain a safe distance between their vehicles and bicycles to prevent such tragic accidents from occurring.

16 children and a bus driver have been injured after a school bus carrying 40 children was knocked over by a U-Haul truck in Victorville, California.

The accident occurred at around 2pm on Thursday afternoon, when the school bus was transporting children between the ages of nine and 11 home from school at the Galileo Academy in Victorville, a small town about 60 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

According to eye witness reports, a U-Haul truck was backing out of a driveway when the school bus approached. California Highway Patrol Officer Joaquin Zubieta reports that a mother and a daughter were in the process of moving house and had hired a U-Haul truck. The mother was driving the vehicle and was being directed by the daughter as she backed out of the driveway. At the time of the incident, there was a miscommunication between the mother and daughter and the mother backed the truck at speed all the way out into the middle of the road, directly in front of the oncoming school bus.

The bus driver attempted to swerve in order to avoid a collision, but was unable to take action in time. The rear of the U-Haul truck hit into the right side of the school bus, causing the rear axle to spin and the bus to be knocked over onto its left side. The bus spun across the road, blocking both lanes of traffic.

16 children on the bus and the bus driver suffered injuries in the accident. The mother and daughter in the U-Haul truck were unharmed. Two of the injured children had serious but not life threatening injuries, and are currently being treated at Loma Linda University Medical Center, according to Tracey Martinez, a spokesperson for the San Bernardino County fire department.

Ten other children were also transported to local hospitals, while four children were treated for minor injuries on the scene and released, said Zubieta. One of the children who was injured seriously had suffered a laceration to the head, while the other seriously injured child had broken his leg.

Parents of the children on the bus were contacted by school district officials and transportation officers, and the uninjured children were collected by their parents from the scene of the accident once they were cleared by medical personnel on the scene. Counseling will be made available to any children who were traumatized by the accident at school.

The Toronto-based bus company that owns the bus that was involved in an accident in New Jersey on Saturday was not authorized to operate in the United States, according to reports from a US transport safety agency.

Early on Saturday morning, the bus, which was headed to New York City from Toronto, slid off an offramp in New Jersey. There were no fatalities, but 23 people were injured and a number of passengers were trapped in the wreckage of the bus and had to be removed by emergency services. According to police reports, none of the injuries were considered critical and most of the injured have been discharged from hospital.

The bus was owned by AVM Max 2000 Chartered Bus Services, Inc. and was being chartered by Cynthia’s Bus Tours to carry a group of Seventh Day Adventists from Toronto to a church convention in Brooklyn, New York City.

The US Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration today confirmed that the owner of the bus, AVM Max 2000, was not authorized to operate in the United States. Records from the transportation department also show that the company had been reported for multiple violations of driver fatigue regulations in the last year and a half. According to the records, a driver for the company was found to have driven for longer that the allowed 11 hours in a day.

According to a spokesperson from the Motor Carrier Safety Administration, AVM Max 2000 does have an adequate safety rating despite the above mentioned violations. However, the company is still not authorized to operate in the United States because they are not covered by US insurance. The violation of their operating privileges will be included in the post-accident investigation that is currently being carried out to determine the cause of the accident and decide on who is liable for the damages to both property and person. According to the bus driver, 51 year old Neville Larmond, another vehicle cut the bus off causing him to swerve and crash the bus. However, state police official Sergeant Adam Grossman, who will be conducting the investigation into the accident, has made it clear that the cause of the incident will only be determined after some time.

Mr. Vimalan Kailasapillai is listed on their website as AVM Max 2000’s CEO. Mr. Kailasapillai has not responded to emails or phone calls from the media as yet, and therefore has not made a comment on the incident.

A fully loaded tour bus from Canada overturned on a highway pass in New Jersey on Saturday, leaving 23 people injured. The bus, which was carrying approximately 60 people at the time of the accident, was en route to New York City when the bus driver lost control while taking an exit on a highway in New Jersey, causing the bus to slide down an embankment and land on its side. Fortunately there were no fatalities in the incident.

The bus driver, who only suffered minor injuries, reported to the New Jersey Police Department that another car cut him off on the highway, forcing him to overturn. The exact circumstances surrounding the accident are yet to be investigated, however. The accident occurred at around 7.30am on the eastbound Interstate 80.

Eight of the passengers who were injured are said to be in a critical condition in hospital, according to hospital spokeswoman Liz Asani. Their injuries are not considered life-threatening, however. The remaining injured  were treated at local hospitals for minor injuries.

The tour bus was chartered by a Toronto based church group on their way to a conference in New York City. Passengers who were not injured in the crash continued their journey on a second bus. The owners of the bus, Toronto-based AVM Max 2000 Charter Services Inc., are yet to make a comment on the incident.

According to passenger reports, a number of the bus windows burst at the time of impact, and some passengers were trapped underneath window frames, luggage and other debris. Medical services and rescue personnel responded promptly to the scene and freed the trapped passengers, transporting the injured to three local hospitals.

This crash is the latest in a series of tour bus accidents to have occurred over the last year on American highways. In 2011, a tour bus carrying a group of tourists from a casino based in Connecticut back to Chinatown in New York City smashed into a guardrail as it entered the city. In this incident, 13 passengers were killed and the bus driver is currently on trial for manslaughter.

The place where Saturday’s accident occurred is known by locals as the ‘spaghetti bowl’, due to the vast number of intersections that are found there. Road closures following the accident caused traffic to be backed up for hours while the scene was cleared, the injured transported to hospital and law enforcement officials investigated the accident site.

A school bus driver has been arrested and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol along with multiple other charges after he smashed a school bus into a home in Long Island on Thursday.

Frederick Flowers, 66, crashed into the garage of a home in Syosset, Long Island on Wednesday, according to Nassau County police officials. The bus driver was arrested on the scene of the accident for charges of aggravated driving while intoxicated.

There were five school children on board the bus at the time of the incident, all between the ages of 5 and 9 years old. None of the children were injured. Flowers was transported to hospital after the accident and has been admitted for treatment of minor injuries. The injuries were not life threatening, said a police spokesperson.

Flowers was transporting students home from the St. Edward the Confessor School at around 3pm when he lost control of the vehicle while coming around a bend and swerved off the road, crashing into the garage of a Syosset home. The bus he was driving was a 2006 model Ford short school bus. No one was in the home at the time of the incident, but the bus did cause significant structural damage to the garage as well as damage to property that was being stored in the garage.

Flowers, who hails from Massapequa Park and has been a bus driver for more than twenty years, was air lifted to a nearby hospital following the incident. Once admitted to hospital, it was determined by investigators and medical personnel that Flowers was under the influence of alcohol, said police in a media report issued on Thursday morning.

Flowers has been charged with multiple accounts of aggravated driving while under the influence of alcohol, reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child. His trial is expected to be held later this month in a local court in Long Island.

School bus accidents such as these occur all too commonly. It is imperative that professional drivers who have the lives of other passengers, in particular children, in their hands are appropriately trained and are held accountable for incidents such as this one. Fortunately, in this case there were no fatalities and no children were injured. However, this accident should serve as a warning about the importance of safe driving practices and regulations need to be enforced to ensure that such an incident is prevented in the future.

At least 22 people have been killed and 19 others injured in a horrific bus accident in northern Peru, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Information received from Peru’s national police department report that a fully loaded tour bus that was carrying more than 50 people was travelling in the province of Piura in northern Peru, in the Andean highlands. The accident occurred in the early hours of Monday morning, when the bus driver apparently seemed to lose control of the bus while taking a sharp curve on a mountainous pass. The bus skidded of the road and plunged 200m down a deep ravine.

The bus, which is reported to belong to the Civa transport and bus hire company, was travelling to Peru’s capital Lima from Piura when the accident occurred.

Police officials and rescue personnel are still attempting to rescue survivors and remove bodies from the wreckage. The rescue effort was made very challenging by the remote area in which the accident occurred, as well as the difficult location of the wreckage at the bottom of the ravine. In addition, the impact of the fall had led to the bus framework being twisted extensively, making it difficult to free passengers and bodies.

The bus driver was one of the fatalities in the accident, and died on the scene shortly after rescue personnel arrived. According to the national police department, a thorough investigation will be launched into the case in order to determine the exact course of the accident. The police are expected to interview some of the survivors once they have recovered, and are also gathering eye witness reports to aid the investigation.

Similar accidents to this tragedy occur frequently on the treacherous, winding roads through Peru’s Andean highlands. This accident is the second in less than a month, happening just two weeks after 14 people were killed in a similar bus accident in the southern region of Peru.

Peru is well known for its high rates of fatalities due to road accidents. On average, more than 50 000 people die and 500 000 people are injured on Peru’s roads each year.

Investigations into the high rates of fatal road accidents have revealed poor road conditions as the most common cause of road accidents in the country. However, drunk driving, unlicensed drivers and reckless driving by drivers, particularly those carrying passengers, contribute to an increased rate of accidents on poorly maintained roads.

A car accident that occurred at a Las Vegas bus stop on September 13^th 2012 that resulted in the deaths of four people has shed light on the importance of safety at bus stops to prevent further mortality.

Jim Hall, the former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and currently a managing partner of Hall and Associates LLC, a safety consulting firm, has voiced his opinion that the US government is doing little to protect commuters from incidents such as the September 13^th tragedy. Bust stop safety has in particular been an area that has been neglected, says Hall.

According to eye witness reports, a driver later identified as Gary Lee Hosey Jr. was travelling at a speed of close to 100 mph when he lost control of his vehicle at the intersection of Decatur Boulevard and Spring Mountain Road in Las Vegas. Hosey’s vehicle spun off the road and into a group of commuters waiting at a bus stop.

This is not the first fatal incident to occur at a bus stop this month, and certainly not the last. On September the 12^th, just one day before, two people were killed when a sports car swerved into a bus stop in Philadelphia.

Accidents such as these are entirely preventable if the government were to take up stricter safety standards at bus stops, according to Hall. Pedestrians that are waiting are bus stops and particularly vulnerable due to their exposed position on the side of busy highways and increasingly reckless driving from those on the roads.

Although the government has imposed a minimum setback distance from the highway for bus stops, there is little other infrastructure in place to protect commuters. Hall has called to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is the federal agency responsible for regulating safety on buses and at bus stops, to better enforce safety regulations at stops across the country.

Hall believes that if bus stops were to have similar safety measures in place as subway stations, for example, mortality from bus stop accidents would be greatly reduced if not eradicated altogether. Measures such as flashing lights when a bus is approaching, a warning signal when vehicles are travelling close to the bus stop and perhaps even physical barriers would all be relatively easy to institute and could save countless lives each year.

Recent legislation has provided grant money to the federal government to spend on improving the safety of public transport, and some of this should rightly be put to bus stop improvements.

A New York bus driver is facing charges of manslaughter in a New York court. The manslaughter trial, which is set to start on Thursday, will decide the fate of Ophadell Williams, who was the driver of a bus that had an accident in New York City last year, killing 15 people.

Williams pleaded not guilty to his charges of manslaughter and negligent homicide shortly after the accident in March 12, 2011. This latest trial will determine whether Williams is to be found liable for the deaths of 15 passengers. Prosecutors in the case claim that Williams was sleep deprived and in no fit state to drive, and should therefore be found guilty.

The bus that Williams was driving was owned by World Wide Travel. In the incident, the bus swerved off the road and smashed into a guardrail on the Interstate 95 at around 5am while it was returning from the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville to Chinatown in Manhattan. The accident tore the roof of the bus off, leaving 15 people dead. Most of the victims were Chinese immigrants staying in Chinatown.

In his defense, Williams claimed that a tractor-trailer cut him off as he was trying to merge lanes, forcing him to swerve and hit the guardrail. However, in the investigation following the incident no evidence could be found of another vehicle being involved.

The prosecutors claim that Williams fell asleep at the wheel, as he had been driving all night and was sleep deprived. The National Transportation Safety Board which investigated the incident, while stopping short of agreeing with the prosecutors, determined that driver fatigue most likely did play a contributory role in the incident, and that the bus company had placed excessive demands on the driver.

According to satellite data, the bus was travelling at close to 80mph in a 50mph zone when it swerved off the road, smashed into the highway guardrail and tipped over. The bus continued to slide after it had toppled, crashing through a pole supporting a road sign. The pole sheared the roof of the bus.

Following the incident, New York state police have increased the frequency of tour bus inspections. As a result, scores of buses have been removed from the roads due to faulty logbooks, inadequate maintenance or un-roadworthy vehicles.

Despite the increased inspections, however, a similar tour bus accident occurred on July 4 this year, just two miles from the site of the Williams incident. Fortunately there were no fatalities in this incident.

Five elementary school students and one adult have been injured in a school bus accident in Maryland, according to local police reports.

The Rockville police department say that the five students were taken to a local hospital after their school bus smashed into another vehicle at around 8.30 on Monday morning. The school bus was carrying 45 students to school when the accident occurred.

The incident happened outside Julius West Middle School where the bus was scheduled to drop the students off for lessons. The Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Services responded promptly to the accident scene, and transported six people, including five children, to hospital where they are being treated for minor injuries.

One child was seriously injured, but did not sustain any life-threatening injuries and is currently in a stable condition in hospital, according to Fire and Rescue spokesperson Beth Ann Nesselt.

The accident occurred at an intersection between Maryland Avenue and Great Falls Road in Rockville, according to Jamal Lewis, a Rockville City Police Officer. Police spokesperson Bob Rappoport says that the bus collided with a silver Jeep Cherokee after the Jeep failed to yield when making a left turn at the intersection. The bus, which was travelling straight through the intersection, collided with the Jeep. Rappoport reports that both drivers were also taken to hospital with minor injuries, and have since been discharged.

A spokesperson for Montgomery County Public Schools, Mrs. Dana Tofig, said that the bus was en route from Julius West Middle School to Ritchie Park Elementary School.

The remainder of the students that were not injured in the accident were collected by another bus and taken to Ritchie Park Elementary School, where they were assessed by a health professional and declared to be clear of injuries.

Although it appears that the Jeep was at fault in the accident, the exact circumstances surrounding the incident are not yet known and police are conducting a thorough investigation. If the driver of the Jeep is found to be liable, then the families of the children that were injured in the accident, or the operators of the school bus that was involved, may have cause to press charges and claim compensation for physical injury, medical expenses or damage to property that resulted from the accident.

If you or any of your family members have been involved in a bus accident such as this one, the wisest course of action is to contact a specialist bus accident attorney who can assist you with possible legal proceedings.

Local authorities have released the name of a seven year old girl who was tragically killed on Friday morning after being hit by a school bus in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Hannah Martin, 7, was killed instantly after she was hit by a Lake Hamilton School bus at around 6.30am on Friday morning. The incident occurred on Old Dallas Road, just west of the town of Hot Springs and northwest of Pearcy.

According to the Garland County Sheriff’s Office, Martin was a second grade student at Lake Hamilton Elementary School. Although the name of the bus driver involved in the accident has been released, it is not yet clear whether charges will be filed against him.

The accident occurred on a street in a rural area with not street lights, early in the morning when it was still dark. It is thought that lack of visibility played a contributory role in accident, but the exact circumstances surrounding the incident are not known.  It not clear whether Martin was in the road when the accident happened or whether the bus swerved off the road and hit her, as there are no eye witness reports.

In a press conference hosted by the Hamilton School District on Friday afternoon, Superintendent Steve Anderson said that the driver of the bus had been working for the Hamilton School District for more than five years and has had no previous accidents. Anderson says that charges have not yet been filed against the driver.

According to authorities, the bus driver knows the Martin family well and Hannah was friends with his own granddaughter.  He is currently on paid leave with the district.

There were four children on board the bus when the incident happened. Although they realized that something was wrong, they did not know that another child had been injured and were not permitted to leave the bus until emergency vehicles had arrived to remove Martin’s body.

After the accident, alternative school district vehicles arrived to pick up these children and take them on to school. At the press conference, school officials reported that counselors will be available to all students that need help dealing with the tragic loss of one of their friends.

Hannah has two younger siblings that are not yet at school. Anderson and other local authorities have met with Hannah’s mother and stepfather and the closely knit Pearcy community has been vocal in their outpourings of support for the family.