Blaming the victims here?
The bus was trapped between the oncoming driver and a guard rail on the right side of the road, he couldn’t go any farther to get out of the truck’s way.
The person who drove that truck is going to have to live with this for the rest of his life, even if he manages to escape jail time.
The Vanderpool, Uvalde, and Leakey (pronounced "LAKE-key) region is full of twisting winding mountain roads and draws bikers from all over the state.
I believe that in some states separation-of-church-and-state means that nobody regulates church buses, sometimes they are driven by church members whose faith exceeds their qualifications to drive a bus, sometimes by an unregulated fly-by-night bus companies.
That is a wrong statement.
The department of motor vehicles sets license requirements by vehicle weights and size and passenger capacity. Just a regular drivers license will let you drive a 15 passenger bus in many states. That applies to Nursing homes, hotels and any organization that does group transport and has nothing to do with church and state.
I’m not blaming the victims at all. I’m just saying that having so many people clustered together in one vehicle is risky. Its the same reason lot’s of organizations don’t allow more than one or two executives in the same plane. If the plane goes down, it’s too great a loss. It’s just risk management.
I remember some years ago we had a bus and our pastor was really excited when he passed his bus driving license. Yep he was the driver. I never did like it but it didn’t last too long. Just too expensive.
When I was in school, the buses were mostly driven by football coaches, janitors, and teachers. Why not pastors?
Yup!
That era had already ended in my state by the time that I began my teaching career, but one of my older colleagues used to tell stories about the “good old days” when she was the coach for girls’ tennis, and her assignment included driving the van that transported the girls to each game.
Every fall, there is a billboard in front of a local elementary school advertising for school bus drivers, “starting at $19.00/hour”. You can make more being a mall cop.
I wonder what kind of drivers they attract with offers like that.
The drivers I’ve seen in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area leave a lot to be desired. Don’t forget a desegregation court order has required a lot more bus miles to be driven moving kids across town so more drivers are needed. (Another black hole to take a second look at.)
In this case though, it was shown that there wasn’t much the driver could do to avoid the accident, given the roadway. Just don’t like having everybody together in case of a direct hit. That’s what was learned from Pearl Harbor to not have all the planes clustered together to make it easy to destroy them all.
If several cars would have been used instead, only one of them likely would have been hit. Risk management.
I don’t like texting while driving as much as anyone else. It is exponentially more dangerous for the motorcycle riders out there.
There is a huge difference between someone pulled over for DUI vs texting while driving. The drunk cannot sober up in a matter of minutes but the texter can simply quit using their phone and be safe to drive the remainder of their journey. I would think that impounding their phone would be just as effective as impounding their car. Most of these kids cannot function without their phone. It is one of those first world problems to have.
Also a ticket or infraction that will add points to their driving record that will impact their insurance rates would also be a good thing. The ticket would show up on the criminal search websites for future employers to search. If you are an employer that requires employees to drive while on your time clock you want to hire someone with a record of DUI or other distracted driving infractions.
There is not enough room in the jails to house the volume of really bad criminals that are already out there. Also if you make it a felony (I don’t agree with unless it results in fatality accident) they will lose their right to vote (probably not a bad thing for society) and will lose their right to own a firearm.
Before school systems bused students in order to segregate. The Brown in Brown v. Board of Education lived across the street from the elementary school he wanted his daughter to attend. Topeka’s public schools bused her elsewhere.
I have written that when I was in my twenties I could do more than one thing at a time. As I got older, I no longer can do several things at a time without decreased attention.
The problem is, how do you pass a law which lets people do the max of their ability?
Answer: You can’t. If a significant percent of drivers cannot text and drive, the only way to stop people being killed by texters is to try to stop everyone.
If a NASCAR driver can handle 90 mph on normal highways, and most of us cannot, we can’t let the NASCAR driver do it either.
I may be wrong on this, but I have tried to develop a mental image of a system which would let young highly talented drivers have a different speed limit. I come up blank.
I guess my point was that a responsible driver knows their limits and drives accordingly regardless of what the law says. Just because there is no law does not mean its ok to be irresponsible. So I think we need to concentrate more on the culture that produces irresponsible drivers rather than just putting more burden on law enforcement.
You have insurance, you slow down for poor conditions, you pay attention, wear seat belts, keep the vehicle in reasonable repair, drive defensively, and so on. The law says I can have two or three glasses of wine, but for me that’s not a good idea. Just sayin’ we need to emphasize personal responsibility.