ANOTHER HORRIFIC BUS CRASH ON A TEXAS HIGHWAY
By Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair
Most people automatically assume that when they board a commercial or chartered bus, they will safely reach their destination. Greyhound and Trailways over a four decade period from the 1940s through the 1970s ingrained that assumption in the American psyche. Before the explosion of air travel in this country in the 1980s, bus travel was considered an economically efficient and fairly comfortable way of traveling across a nation that spans four time zones.
But then another facet of traditional American life began to sour. Bus accidents became more frequent, and increasingly more deadly – especially in Texas whose highways are notoriously crowded with F150s and SUVs, all seemingly in a hurry to get somewhere fast. The following is a list of fatal bus crashes in Texas over the past five years as reported by Associated Press (Aug. 8, 2008):
- February 4, 2003 – A chartered bus carrying a church group crossed a median and collided with an SUV just south of Waco, killing five bus passengers and two SUV passengers and injuring dozens more.
- May 24, 2004 – A chartered casino bus traveling down Interstate 10 in Southeast Texas returning Texas residents from Louisiana collided with an 18-wheeler, killing one bus passenger and sending numerous others to area hospitals.
- September 23, 2005 – As Hurricane Rita barreled toward the Texas coast, a bus carrying 44 nursing home residents and staffers was rocked by a series of explosions after one of its wheels caught on fire on Interstate 45 near Dallas, killing 23 residents. The National Transportation Safety Board in 2007 faulted the bus company and a federal vehicle safety agency in the fire.
- October 25, 2005 – A tour bus crossed Interstate 35 in San Antonio after tire blew out and crashed into two 18-wheelers, killing the bus driver and injuring two bus passengers and the driver of one of the trucks.
- March 30, 2006 – A bus carrying a Beaumont high school girls’ soccer team to a playoff game in Humble rolled onto its side on Highway 90 near Devers, killing two of the teenage girls.
- January 2, 2008 – A chartered bus from Mexico on its way to Houston rolled onto its side near Victoria and was struck by a pickup truck, killing one person and injuring dozens of others.
Then on August 8, 2008 the unspeakable happened. A chartered bus carrying a Vietnamese Catholic church group from Houston to a religious festival in Missouri crashed onto its side into a guard railing after an illegal re-treaded tire blew out on a freeway in Sherman, Texas. Seventeen passengers died – fourteen at the scene – and another 40 were injured, many critically. It was a tragedy that should not have happened. The company that owned the bus, Angel Tours, has been cited for a laundry list of safety violations; the driver of the bus has a history of unsafe driving and substance abuse violations; and the bus itself had been declared unsafe to drive outside the state of Texas. (more…)
