Horrific bus crash in Bronx

[Len Silva]

Incredible pictures.  The bus slid on it's into a light pole and sliced in half.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/bronx-bus-crash-kills-13-new-york/story?id=13121602

[Highway Yacht]

It wouldn't have taken much for the roof to have been completely sliced off..

Jimmy

[happycamperbrat]

Wow! Right at passenger seat level too, how awful! The driver survived, he must have been seat belted in but the passengers were not and were probably flying around when it went on it's side. Then the pole cut thru the bus killing 13 people.........

[niles500]

Thought those posts were supposed to be "break away" type to avoid such damage in these types of accidents

[Jeremy]

Amazingly this made the TV news here this afternoon - that would be unusual even on a very slow news day, and there's hardly a shortage of dramatic events to report on at the moment.

This bus will make an ideal conversion candidate in due course - after all, the roof raise is half done...

Jeremy

[Iceni John]

The steel post that appears to have done the damage seems to be still completely upright.   I know that fire hydrants have break-away sections, and concrete streetlight posts sometimes don't withstand even minor impacts, but maybe this post in NY was too strong.   Do the FMVSS roof-strength standards address the potential issue of bus roof supports being sheared through, or is this just a freak accident that could not have been reasonably anticipated?

John

[buswarrior]

The upright looks to be one side of an overhead sign, so not a breakaway type.

And protected with the usual steel barrier, won't be any good against a coach tipped over sliding on its side.

FMVSS roof strength standards? for a bus?

nope.

Check out some of the crash videos on youtube of MCI E and D model coaches in OHIO at TRC.

MCI Bus Crash Test.wmv

Insane Bus Crash Test (All-New Test)

Just a box with tires on the bottom for hauling folks.

The only crash protection is the driver.

Of note, seat belts are installed in all seating positions in the MCI J coaches purchased last year by the local big line/charter fleet. This will be the norm moving forward, either voluntary or legislated.

happy coaching!
buswarrior

[belfert]

Would there be any chance of the driver surviving either of those MCI crash tests?  It looks like the driver compartment is completely crushed in either case.

In the Bronx crash I wonder if the driver survived only because he/she sits lower than the passengers?

[Iceni John]

FMVSS roof strength standards? for a bus?

So OTR and tour buses don't have to comply with standards equivalent to school buses' FMVSS 220 and 221?   Yikes.   (220 specifies roof strength and rollover protection, and 221 specifies body panel integrity and joint strength.)   I've often wondered how newer buses with their huge window areas compare to older designs with lots of smaller side windows (and lots of roof support posts between them).   Maybe newer isn't always better?

Whatever the standards, or possible lack thereof, it's still a terrible accident, and we should give thought to the survivors who may well be badly injured for life.

John

[RoyJ]

Would there be any chance of the driver surviving either of those MCI crash tests?  It looks like the driver compartment is completely crushed in either case.

Maybe if a Terminator was driving the coach 

The survival space is absolutley zero; even the first row passengers would receive servere injury if not death.

Our coaches are safe compared to RVs, but they're definitely not designed for crash against immovable objects. In fact, no heavy commercial vehicle is.

Regarding the bus in the news, the only "slice protection" a bus has is the two thin A-pillars. Even with a break-away pole, I doubt those a-pillars would provide enough resistence to trip breakaway. This is definitely a very rare crash type.

Also, with modern coaches that gross 54,000 lbs, it's just about impossible to design a rollover roof. A school bus is gross 36,000 lbs, but will be much lighter in a rollover, as there isn't loaded luggage bays (unbelted passengers are "weightless"). The amount of window supports far out-number a coach.

Lesson learned? Don't roll over in front of a heavy sign!

[DMoedave]

The bus has a black box recorder and eye witnesses (if you can believe the news) have the bus going at a high rate of speed as well as several semi's going fast and they named one driver by name as being a person of interest.

[belfert]

Our coaches are safe compared to RVs, but they're definitely not designed for crash against immovable objects. In fact, no heavy commercial vehicle is.

Aren't modern semi tractors designed like cars such that the engine will slide under the driver in a frontal collision?  Modern semi tractors even have driver airbags which I don't think any coaches have yet.  Both of these would seem to greatly increase safety.

[buswarrior]

An automobile will slice it's roof off just as easily as that coach in the Bronx, they aren't designed for that either.

The Bronx coach driver best seek out his God for further instruction, He isn't done with him yet...

The driver is a fatality in both of those MCI crash tests, little debate there!

In the realm of the more mundane front end collision in a coach/transit, the driver is regularly in danger of leg/knee/foot injury.

Feet are just inside the impact point, and the steering column has two ways to go, the wheel tips out the windshield, or it tips into the driver's lap.

Amputations of lower extremities are a common conclusion. That rarely gets reported in the media, you may only hear at the time of the incident that the driver was extricated and taken to hospital.

Rarely a badge of honour, as the amputee usually had a hand in the cause of the collision.

In many of the recent motorcoach accidents, a major problem has been passenger ejection. The deaths are attributed to the bodies being thrown about and out of a tipped over coach. Of particular worry are bodies being smeared out the side sliding against the ground once the glass is gone. Nothing to keep you away from the moving ground.

Building a coach to auto crash standards would be prohibitively expensive, in both construction and operation, as the weight of materials would be measured in the thousands of pounds.

And there is little evidence to suggest it is necessary. Motocoach travel is very safe, much safer than being in an auto. There have to be numbers to base the decision on. In this area of study, some death is unpreventable, and acceptable, statistically speaking.

A trend in ejection has been emerging, which is what got the tests at Ohio TRC started.

The debate rages as to what standard to design the seat belts in a motorcoach, as the forces applied to the passengers in most "normal" collisions is far less than in an automobile, as the coach's greater mass absorbs more force.

IIRC, auto belts are designed to 20 g's, and the same 20g collision in a car would only tranmit 7 g's to a motorcoach passenger.

The bracing needed to hold 20g seatbelt anchors is substantially more than the current seat mounting rails can provide. And the passenger has to choose to wear it in the first place...

Lots of difficult decisions to balance the odds and the costs.

Airbag usefulness in a heavy vehicle? Safety engineering or marketing? I'm not sure, and neither are the other manufacturers...

If nothing, we live in interesting times!

happy coaching!
buswarrior

[wildbob24]

More info:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/13/new.york.bus.accident/index.html?hpt=T2

Bob

[usbusin]

And, more info:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TOUR_BUS_ACCIDENT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-03-14-16-33-15