14 DAY TRIAL // A bus crash in Cincinnati has put six people in the hospital and has left dozens of other passengers with minor wounds.
A Greyhound bus crashed on Interstate 75 on Saturday morning, in Butler County. The vehicle dropped to its side in a cornfield, near Liberty Township.
According to NKY, the driver is among the six people hospitalized after the collision.
35 passengers were injured when the vehicle overturned, at 3:50 a.m. The bus was carrying 51 people at the time.
“We are very lucky. [...] The injuries are not as serious as they could have been,” Liberty Township Fire Chief Paul Stumpf states for News Cincinnati.
Six people were airlifted in order to be provided with medical treatment, while others were treated for head, neck and back injuries at local hospitals.
“The driver was fully rested,” says Kim Plaskett, a spokeswoman for the transportation company.
He has been identified as 64-year-old Dwayne Garrett of Cincinnati. He has 15 years of work with the company.
He had just started his shift one hour before the collision, and the vehicle was recently inspected.
“There were no issues with the bus,” Plaskett, mentioning an inspection carried out two weeks ago.
Garrett's condition is not known at this point, but he has incurred non-life-threatening injuries. Officials are still searching for what made the bus flip over, and an investigation is ongoing.
Industry experts claim that human error in steering the vehicle has been a factor in the accident.
“The bus driver population is on the upper bracket age-wise ... and while this is generally speaking, drivers tend not to be as healthy than other occupations as it is a sedentary sitting occupation and people can get tired,” comments Steve Keppler, executive director of Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, Maryland.
However, Keppler has admitted that Greyhound has a very good record when it comes to the passengers’ safety.