Bus 1, Car 0

Driving these big yellow boxes, one thinks about Sir Isaac Newton a lot. When accelerating, when stopping, when turning, when approaching kids on the sidewalk. You know, mass and inertia, objects in motion and all of that. Most of all, though, one thinks about 17 tons versus one ton. As in, collision.

Luckily, although the thought of it is constantly with them, most school bus drivers never have to face the reality. The opportunity is out there, to be sure; all bus drivers have their share of stories about near misses, of car drivers somehow failing to see them ("we're big, we're yellow, and we have lights all over us; what's hard to see?") and pulling out in front of them, or changing lanes into them, or running stop signs or traffic lights. And all too often, the cars' drivers are on their cell phones. (How else to understand overlooking our behemoths?) Scary stories, but thankfully mostly near misses.

A week ago Tuesday the worry became my reality.

I was driving on a 4 lane divided expressway.  I had just picked up the last of my middle-schoolers and was headed for their school to let them off. I had turned on to the expressway only a quarter mile earlier, so I was still accelerating, probably doing 30-35 m.p.h. on my way up to the 45 m.p.h. limit. As I approached a minor intersecting two lane residential street, I saw a car decelerating towards the stop sign, i.e., behaving in way that looked pretty ordinary, but then it started accelerating into Parkway, and directly into my path!  I swerved to the left, thinking at the time that the other driver still had time to stop if they had my now-vacated right lane to use.  (Fortunately I knew the left lane was empty, so swerving was a relatively safe option.)  Instead, the car kept coming and plowed into the middle of my bus's side. 

It was amazing how quickly it all happened.

I heard the crash more than felt it, and fortunately my control of the bus was never in doubt.

I immediately pulled back into the right lane and parked against the curb. My first thought was for the kids, of course, but they all seemed to be okay.  Still, I asked, and they all said they were okay.  So then I radioed our central dispatch (which alerts police and rescue), and set out my reflective triangles.  Before I finished that task, the police and an ambulance arrived (we were only a quarter mile from their shared regional headquarters). 

It was only then that I looked at the car that hit us.  It was about 150 yards behind me, and its entire front end had been destroyed -- utterly destroyed; even the engine was damaged and deformed.  (Fortunately, the passenger compartment was perfectly intact, and the driver's only injury came from the airbag.)  The car was a fairly new Nissan Versa.

By comparison, the bus suffered little damage.  One tire and its rim were ruined, and there was sheet metal damage along the side, but all of that was below the level of the main frame and there was no structural damage at all.  Once the wheel and tire were changed, it drove normally.

Score: Bus 1, car 0!

I really don't think I could have done anything differently.  There was too little time to stop, or even decelerate significantly; maneuvering to avoid was the only real option. Had I not swerved, I might have run into the side of the car, especially if I had tried braking, in which case there would have been a good chance that I would have killed the driver, or at least seriously injured her.

There were no skid marks from the car.  Frankly, I don't think the driver saw me until the bus flashed in front of her.  My guess - and it's only that, a guess - is that she was on a cell phone.  Like I said, she was coming from a minor residential street while I was on a major one - it's the sort of intersection where a driver on the lesser road just naturally expects to stop for the fast-moving, heavy traffic of the major road.  If she wasn't distracted by a cell phone, it's hard to imagine why she did what she did.  I mean, it's not as if a 40 foot long, 17 ton brick-shaped yellow box with lights on is hard to miss!

As for my reaction ... some of the other bus drivers asked me later if I was OK (in the sense of not being so rattled I couldn't work, or some such) but it didn't affect me much at all, really.

It all happened faster than I could react emotionally (e.g., I was initially too busy to feel anything, and the adrenaline hit well after the fact). After it was over and I thought back on it, I couldn't see anything I did that I wished I could have done differently, nor did I have any regrets about what I did do.  So it wasn't upsetting or scary or anything like that. 

It did help, I think, that when the police and my boss arrived on the scene and surveyed the scene, they were very matter-of-fact and didn't criticize or comment on my actions directly or indirectly at all.

It made for an interesting morning. Besides, one student aboard told me she didn't really want to go to first period math anyway.