A Temple church group chartered a bus from Central Texas Trails Inc. on Valentine’s Day 2003 to attend a Christian music concert in Dallas. It was raining when charter-bus driver Johnny Cummings approached an Interstate 35 traffic jam too fast, lost control of his tour bus, crossed a median, swerved into oncoming traffic, and collided with an SUV, killing five of his passengers. Cummings and the charter company declared bankruptcy, so 19 injured bus passengers and survivors sued Motor Coach Industries, the bus manufacturer, for its failure to include three-point seatbelts on its 1996-manufactured bus. The bus met federal safety standards, NHTSA has found that seatbelts on tour buses do not “enhance overall occupant protection,” and no tour buses sold in the US have seatbelts, but a McLennan County jury awarded $17.5 million anyway. Judge Jim Meyer allowed Houston attorney Thomas Brown to argue that a jury vote for the plaintiffs was a vote for the cause of safety. A second trial with a second set of plaintiffs from the bus accident remains to be scheduled. (Matt Joyce, “Jury awards bus crash victims $17.5 million”, Waco Tribune-Herald, Nov. 4).
Deep pocket files: Motor Coach Industries I-35 bus crash trial
A Temple church group chartered a bus from Central Texas Trails Inc. on Valentine’s Day 2003 to attend a Christian music concert in Dallas. It was raining when charter-bus driver Johnny Cummings approached an Interstate 35 traffic jam too fast, lost control of his tour bus, crossed a median, swerved into oncoming traffic, and collided […]
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no doubt the passengers enriched by their lawsuit success and moved by their religeosity have reached out to the family devastated by the bus accident. This is expecially important that they be charitable since the family in the automobile has no creative legal theory by which to attack the manufacturer of the bus.
Surely the bus manufacturer knew that such a huge and unwieldy vehicle would occasionally go out of control and cause immense damage to other vehicles. They should have limited their busses to the size and weight of the average car.
(sarcasm off)
“plaintiffs’ lawyers ……. said ……. along with laminated safety glass on passenger windows,”
As a retired Volunteer Firefighter with a number of years extraditing victims from accidents, the use of laminated safety glass on the side windows of any vehicle will cost more lives then it would save. First responders usually break the side windows and administer first aid while different team begins extradition in severe collisions. Trying to remove the laminated safety glass is time consuming and not easy. Also when a vehicle is burning will the manufacturer be liable when the passengers cannot get out quickly and suffer severe injuries or death? The standards set by the National Transportation Safety Board are designed after careful consideration of all accidents not just one incident. There is no way a vehicle manufacture can build a vehicle to be safe in every type of collision.
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