Last Wednesday Kentucky State Police released the cause of a 2012 Carroll County, Ky., school bus crash that took the lives of two preschool students in a Head Start program. Investigators said it was operator error on the part of the bus driver.
No charges were filed against the bus driver, Laura Reed, even though she was found at fault in the crash that killed two 3-year-olds, Caroline Tuttle and Ryder Deitz. Investigators called the crash “a tragic accident,” noting that they did look into Reed’s driving record and found she had completed all the proper training and had no prior incidents of poor driving.
In addition to Reed, a bus monitor and nine children were on board the bus when it crashed on Boone Road during an extremely windy day Oct. 29. The bus monitor and seven other Head Start students suffered injuries and were rushed to the hospital. Everyone on the bus was reportedly wearing seat belts.
Reed told investigators she steered the small bus off the road to let another car pass, reports WHAS11, but she lost control when she tried to get the bus back on the road. Reed also told them another vehicle “did not do anything to force her off the road,” said Trooper Brad Arterburn.
The accident reconstruction found Reed caused the crash by over-correcting and over-steering, causing the bus to veer off the two-lane county road and wrap around a tree, according to investigators. They added that the bus had “all the safety precautions any modern bus can have.”
Arterburn noted the small school bus was not speeding, and toxicology reports found that Reed had no drugs or alcohol in her system at the time.
Another school bus accident in Carroll County that occurred 25 years ago is considered the second deadliest bus disaster in the nation. In this case, a drunk driver in a pickup truck traveling in the wrong direction on an interstate near Carrollton slammed into a gasoline-powered church bus. Consequently, its gas tank ruptured and fire engulfed the entire bus, killing 27 of the 67 passengers on board who were unable to evacuate. The crash also led to NHTSA revising Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 217 to improve school bus egress, FMVSS 301 to increase fuel tank integrity and FMVSS 302 to make interior materials less flammable. Kentucky also specified that only less-flammable diesel school buses could be used in the state and increased the number of emergency exit doors and roof hatches.
May marked the public premiere of “Impact: After the Crash,” a documentary about the 1988 Carroll County bus crash, which drew several hundred guests as well as state officials. The film by Winchester native Jason Epperson features stories about the 27 people who perished and survivors’ memories of the crash.
