Charleston bus accident attorneys want you to know that last year a Texas bus crash killed 17 people and after further examination, it seems that the accident was easily preventable. “It was a perfect storm of gross negligence on the part of multiple parties,” Yen-Chi Le, from Huston who lost her mother in the bus crash expressed after attending the hearing. The serious bus accident, one of the worst in U.S. history, occurred in August 2008, when a bus chartered by the Vietnamese Catholic community launched over a bridge 60 miles north of Dallas, Texas. The bus was carrying 55 passengers.
After an investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the front right tire had been punctured before and had been retreaded poorly. Due to the retreading the tire was under inflated and was punctured again. Front axle tire retreading is prohibited by Federal regulations. Bus drivers should check tire pressure before each journey and new buses are to be equipped with tire pressure gages that monitor tire pressure.
How are bus restrictions and guidelines mandated? The Texas Department of Public Safety is responsible of overseeing buses and reissuing licenses to owners/companies after they have passed proper safety inspections. The bus involved in this crash was inspected 8 days before the accident. How did this bus pass the inspection, when retreat is prohibited on front axle tires? Someone overlooked it at Five Minute Inspections, the Houston inspection company that performed the inspection just eight days before the accident.
Obviously, Five Minute Inspections, needs to take more than five minutes when inspecting buses that will be carrying large parties because they are not only a time bomb for passengers, they are also an enormous liability for other motorists who can be seriously injured in a bus crash.
