Sad Day In Town

Keith Browning · May 18, 2018

Sad day in town here in Mount Olive New Jersey - an out of town school bus filled with 5th grade students and seven adults was rear ended by a heavy dump truck. The collision tore the body off of the chassis and left it on it's side in the median. Closed Interstate 80 all day and still closed this evening. One child and one teacher were killed and all but three of the remaining 40+ people were injured many critically. It is never a good thing when someone dies on our highways but when it involves children your heart just sinks, especially if you are a parent. This sent a chill down my spine when the news started to come in with few details. I read a comment today that these buses are designed to do this in accidents like this? I have never heard of that - anyone know if this is true?

The poop is the bus driver missed their exit and made an illegal u-turn at one of those police turn around points that cross the median. That would explain the violent impact if the bus was barely moving as it just turned into the fast lane. Stupid!

Fredsvt · May 19, 2018

It's really quite sad. I feel for the families of those killed and hurt, and for the dump driver, who had NO chance of stopping a fully loaded tri-axle at 60+ mph in a short distance, he or she has to live with what happened.

The driver entering I80 at that on ramp, stopping and then crossing two lanes of high speed traffic to make it in that "official" U turn.

After a few years of speaking to several customers that are more recent bus drivers, they are of the opinion that all traffic must stop or yield for ANYTHING a school bus does, regardless of whether or not the red warning lights are on.