Carroll County High School Bus Problems

Carroll County High School is located in Hillsville, Virginia and holds classes for grades 10-12. It gives students the choice of driving to school or riding a bus to school. In the recent happenings it seems like riding a school bus is not the best choice. Twice this year, a school bus has either hit or backed over a students car.

The most recent accident happened on Monday the fourth of May at 8:15 AM. A students mother had dropped her daughter off in front of the school building in the daughters 2002 Mitsubishi Eclipse. Almost immediately after the student entered the schools doors the mothers day turned bad. She had pulled up to the exit of the parking lot to get out on the road to return home. She was behind a special education bus and in front of a line of cars, so she had nowhere to escape to if things turned bad. While waiting for traffic to pass, the driver of the school bus noticed that a student was trying to leave the senior parking lot, so she backed the bus up to let them out, not realizing that there was a car behind her. The driver of the car laid on the horn, but the bus driver paid it no attention and kept backing up. Even after the bus made an impact on the front bumper of the car, she kept backing up. It was not until the back of the bus was on the windshield of the car that she stopped.

The driver of the car was stunned at first, but when she saw and heard her daughters windshield starting to crack she quickly exited the car. The schools resource officer was the first authority to arrive at the scene of the accident. He is the one who wrote the police crash report. The Hillsville Police Department showed up a little while later. The driver of the car found the officers from the police department to be very rude. They talked to the bus driver, the resource officer, and the school teachers, but did not even approach the driver of the car.

They had to use a jack to lift the bus off of the car. While doing so, the jack left a large yellow mark in the side of the car, which was previously undamaged. The damage was rather extreme. The front bumper was dented, along with the hood which was pushed back and dented severely with the paint scraped off of it. Something under the hood busted, but nobody is sure what it was yet because the hood was too damaged to be able to lift it and check it. The windshield was busted at the bottom where the muffler hit it and cracked up the middle because of the pressure of the bus. The dent and scratch of the jack on the side of the car is the last of the damage.

Nothing has been arranged yet, but several teachers at Carroll County High School assured the student that if her car was able to be fixed, that they would pay it in full, and if it was totaled, that they would buy her a new car. The bus driver was given the options to either resign or be fired. She resigned.

This is the second time this has happened at Carroll County High School this past school year. Two times is two too many. This shows that bus drivers need to be monitored more carefully and need to receive more training before operating a bus with students on it. If not a car, the bus could have hit a student. The bus driver was lucky this time.