News: Second Tour Bus Crash in NYC
(Long Island, N.Y.) A private charter bus carrying at least forty passengers from New York City’s Chinatown to Philadelphia crashed on the New Jersey Turnpike killing two people and hospitalizing nearly all of the passengers. The incident occurred Monday night at roughly 9pm and is the second major tri-state bus crash in the last three days. Saturday morning’s crash left fifteen passengers dead near the Hutchinson River Parkway on its way to Chinatown from Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut.
In Monday’s incident, the bus was traveling southbound near Exit 9 in East Brunswick, just forty miles southwest of Manhattan. The New Jersey Turnpike is one of the most populated US highways and includes five lanes of traffic. The crash occurred south of the Tower Center Office Hotel Complex.
Among the two fatalities were the fifty-year-old driver and Taiwanese nationalist who resided in Forrest Hills. The driver was killed after having been thrown into the windshield and was pronounced dead at the scene. State troopers and first responders attempted CPR without success.
The other fatality was that of a twenty-year-old passenger from Royersford, Pennsylvania who was partially ejected from the driver’s side window. Off-duty fireman and State Troopers from Cranbury Station retrieved him from the window and stabilized him while waiting for medics to arrive at the scene. He later perished while being hospitalized at Robert Wood Johnson Rahway Hospital in New Brunswick.
Two passengers were in critical condition and were sitting in the rear of the bus at the time of the accident. Though authorities are unsure what caused the crash, it’s believed that the back of the bus was lifted and struck the underside of an overpass. Five passengers were in the trauma units of JFK Hospital in Edison, St. Peter’s Hospital in New Brunswick, and Raritan Bay Medical Center in Oldbridge.
The bus allegedly ran off the road and hit a grassy median before slamming into a concrete support and coming to a halt at a drainage ditch embankment on the side of the highway. Part of the bus were still in the right lane of the turnpike and passengers claim to have heard the sound of a tire explosion prior to the crash. It’s unsure whether the tire blew before or after the accident, but authorities have taken a sample of the tire to determine the chain of events.
The bus company involved in this incident is Super Luxury Tours out of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The bus, which was a ’99 Van Hool Bus, was moved to an impound lot where it will be examined for evidence, much like the bus involved in Saturday’s collision. Both bus companies have had a history of safety problems.
Super Luxury Tours had been on alert for unsafe driving prior to the accident. They have had issues with fatigued driving, driver fitness violations, and like the other company, has been involved in two accidents with injuries in the past two years. It has had issues with speeding, improper passing, failure to maintain driver logs, and maintenance problems according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Like the other bus company, the bus fare is set at a discount price of $20 for a roundtrip ticket and the investigation into safety issues could take weeks. Traffic lanes were closed for six hours at the time of the incident while New Jersey State Police issued a “mass casualty incident.” Eleven-year-old twin girls and a two-year-old boy were among the passengers, while a survivor of the crash claims that the driver didn’t slam the breaks or swerve, which may have prevented the bus from flipping.
