Dozens of School Children on Bus that Collided with Car

Dozens of school children were unharmed when the school bus they were riding in crashed.

According to multiple news reports, the incident happened in Franklin shortly after 4 p.m. on April 13.

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Police said the bus driver, 71, suffered a medical emergency while behind the wheel. The driver was taken to a nearby hospital from the scene and none of the 42 students who were on the bus were reportedly injured in the crash.

Fox 6 reports the crash occurred near Rawson and Forest Home.

“A ‘First Student’ school bus that had departed from Country Dale Elementary School collided with a vehicle that was stopped at a red light at the intersection,” the article reads.

Police say it appears the school bus driver lost control of the bus after suffering the medical emergency. The details of the emergency were not released. The driver of the vehicle that the bus hit wasn’t hurt as a result of the incident.

Country Dale Elementary School officials responded to the scene to assist with turning the children over to their parents. The students were picked up at the crash scene by another bus and taken home.

A 2012 study in the Journal of Safety Research, “Risk factors Associated with Bus Accident Severity in the United States,” notes that buses are not, by some measures, necessarily safer than cars. The researchers state that “while bus accidents comprise a relatively small share of the total accidents (0.6 percent) in the United States, the number of bus accidents per million passenger miles (3.04) is comparable to the number of car accidents per million driven miles (3.21).”

The study focuses, however, on the characteristics of bus drivers who are involved in accidents. First, “young novice bus drivers increase the risk for higher accident severity.” However, the findings also suggest that “accident severity increases beyond the age of 55, and the most significant increase is for bus drivers over 65 years old.

In fact, model results show that relative to drivers between 35 and 55 years old, drivers over 65 years of age increase the likelihood of light injuries by 18.6 percent, of severe non-incapacitating injuries by 33.1 percent, of severe incapacitating injuries by 52.3 percent, and of fatality by 18.0 percent.”

The researchers also find that “83.0 percent of the bus drivers involved in bus accidents do not exhibit risky driving behaviors,” and only a “small percent (nearly 4 percent) of the bus drivers involved in accidents are charged with serious offenses such as speeding, drowsy driving and driving under the influence of alcohol.”