Dec. 14, 1961. Twenty children are killed and 17 more injured, some critically, when a train slams into a school bus in Greeley, Colo. The impact tore the bus in two. Pieces of the bus and the bodies of dead and injured children were scattered over 450 feet of the single-track right of way. The driver testified that he never heard the approaching train. Oct. 25, 1995. Seven children are killed when a commuter train rams a school bus in Fox River Grove, Ill. The bus body and chassis were sheared apart by the force of the collision. The driver, also the district's safety trainer, failed to notice that the bus was overhanging the tracks as it was waiting at a traffic light. March 10, 1998. Two brothers are killed when a freight train collides with a school bus near Buffalo, Mont. The driver told investigators that he didn't open the service door at the rail crossing and couldn't hear the train's whistle when he pulled onto the tracks. Careless errors admitted
When a school bus is struck by a train at a highway rail crossing, one thing is certain — it's nearly always the bus driver's fault. The recent tragedy in central Montana is dramatic testimony to this fact. The driver, 36-year-old Stewart Abbott, told federal investigators that he failed to open the service door to check for an oncoming train and that he may not have heard the train because of music on the bus' stereo system and the noise of the vehicle's heater fan. Coincidentally, Abbott's account of the accident is eerily similar to another school bus driver's description of a grade crossing accident that occurred less than two weeks earlier. On Feb. 28, a school bus returning from a girls track meet was clipped by a freight train in Sinton, Texas, resulting in minor injuries to a dozen passengers. The driver, 76-year-old Lynn Pickens, is quoted in a Texas newspaper as saying that he didn't bother to open the service door to look for an oncoming train because one of the passengers said she was cold. Also, Pickens said he allowed the radio to blare because the passengers preferred it that way. Basic safety rules violated
Abbott and Pickens apparently made the same mistakes. They violated two of the three basic tenets of rail crossing safety: Stop, Look and Listen. They didn't look, and they didn't listen. You must open the service door to look and you must quiet the bus and its passengers to listen. In both accidents criminal charges are being considered against the drivers. At press time, there was no word on Abbott's employment status, but Pickens, thankful that his miscue did not cost any lives, resigned two days after the accident. He saved the transportation director at Beeville Independent School District the trouble of firing him. That may sound harsh, but safety is the bread-and-butter of this industry. Everything else is secondary. It's nice to be able to say that your buses pick up and deliver children on time and that the driver has a smile and a friendly word for every child who rides his bus. Or that the buses are clean and shiny. Or that parent complaints are down 20 percent this year. But the bottom line is, of course, safe passage. In the Sinton collision, the freight train was traveling less than 20 mph. That's probably what kept the accident from becoming a disaster. Abbott wasn't so lucky. Drivers are not perfect. They are not robots, devoid of feeling toward their charges. With their job, however, comes great responsibility. They must observe all of the safety rules, especially those involving rail crossings. Drivers, and transportation managers, who are satisfied with less may one day answer to the ghosts of Greeley and Fox River Grove and Buffalo.