In September 1989, a tragic school bus accident claimed the lives of 21 students – the worst school bus accident in Texas history. The bus, which was carrying 81 students at the time of the accident, was traveling down Farm-to-Market Road 676 in Alton, Texas when it was hit by a Dr. Pepper truck owned by the Valley Coca-Cola Bottling Company. The bus left the road and fell 24 feet into an excavation pit. It came to rest on its left side in 10 feet of water – the bus was totally submerged – and 35 feet away from the closest shoreline.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the cause of the accident was the inattention of the truck driver. However it also determined that the accident itself did not cause the deaths of the students. That is to say, none of the deaths were directly caused by the impact of the truck into the bus, or the subsequent fall of the bus off the road. All 21 deaths were due to drowning or “complications related to the submersion.”
The NTSB report concluded that: “Contributing to the severity of the accident was the lack of a sufficient number of emergency exits on the school bus to accommodate the rapid egress of all 81 students.” In fact the students only had one exit door available to them, the rear emergency exit, because the front boarding door had been damaged during the accident. It does not take an accident expert to realize that 81 students plus a bus driver trying to find one working emergency exit while submerged under water will likely add to the severity of any accident.
The NTSB made 20 recommendations in its report aimed at several different organizations involved including the city of Alton, the Valley Coca-Cola Bottling company, and the school district. The main recommendations were to require school buses to have more emergency exits at the floor level, fit the exits with devices that stop the doors from closing once they have been opened, and conduct safety studies on the advantages of larger side windows that could be used as an emergency exit. The board also recommended that evacuation guides be prepared, and schools review emergency school bus evacuations with their students.
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