A fatal crash that included a school bus in Mississippi yesterday morning should prove to all that ice patches on roadways should always be reported to authorities when first noted, according to the aunt of two girls injured in the wreck. But, perhaps, the crash serves as another example of the inherent dangers that remain for students who are taken to school by another driver, in this case a 17 year old.
MyEyewitnessNews.com reported that 9-year-old Roddick Isom was killed when the Honda in which he was riding with five other students hit a patch of ice and slid into oncoming traffic, where it struck the school bus. It was a two-way road, and apparently the bus driver had no where else to go, according to police. It just all happened too quickly, as it almost always does in such tragic cases.
The car that caused the crash was, you guessed it, driven by a teen driver.
Brenda Wyatt, the aunt of two other girls injured in the teen’s car, said she felt guilty for not reporting the ice patch, which she herself encountered on the very same road about a half hour earlier. She said the crash should serve as a wake up call to all motorists. Indeed it should, for an additional reason.
The teen driver, Natasha Isom, was likely doing her parents a favor in giving a ride to her two younger brothers and three neighbors. But all that has changed. It’s a social dilemma that few can grasp until a crash like this occurs. Students need to get to school, and for a plethora of reasons the school bus is not always an option, especially in today’s economic crunch.
The sad fact remains that children will continue to die in motor vehicle crashes, especially on their way to and from school, whether in a school bus or not. They will also die while walking or biking, usually when struck by another vehicle. Just far fewer of them will perish when riding in a school bus, likely the most under-valued public safety option in the nation. Just look at the numbers. During the 2008-2009 school year, six students died in school buses on their way to or from school compared to 368 students in other vehicles and 62 student pedestrians or bicyclists.
Bad weather, literally on the surface, was the cause of this specific crash, but the underlying problem could be that the teen driver was far too inexperienced to be driving in such conditions.
