Accident Reconstruction Network > News > August 2007

Accident Reconstruction News Article

School Bus Manufacturers Accused of Creating Death Traps, Lawyer Says

The family of Cody Shively, a 12-year old boy who suffered severe brain and eye injuries in a school bus accident in Grant County, Kentucky, has taken steps to sue the manufacturers of the bus, because it lacked seat belts and sufficient structural integrity. The case has received national attention because a video camera inside the bus captured Cody and other children being tossed around the bus during the accident, amidst flying metal beams, shards of glass, and other debris.

The suit alleges the manufacturers of the school bus are Navistar International Corporation, Navistar International Transportation Corporation, International Truck and Engine Corporation, and IC Corporation. The suit also claims that the Grant County school board members were negligent for allowing school children to ride in such a dangerous bus.

According to Stanley Chesley, an attorney for the Shively family, school bus manufacturers have spent millions lobbying federal, state, and local governments for decades to fend off laws and regulations that would have made school buses as safe as other vehicles on the road. One lobbying group funded by school bus manufacturers, the American School Bus Council, even claims on its website that school buses are safe because of their "color and size" and because they "use what is called 'passive restraint,' meaning all a child must do to be protected is simply sit down in a seat."

(See http://www.americanschoolbuscouncil.org/index.php?page=faq#a_2 )

"Anyone who would make such absurd statements," says Chesley, "should be forced to watch those children flying around that bus during the accident. One moment they were just sitting in their seats, the next they were being thrown back and forth like trees in a hurricane and the bus was crushing like a sardine can."

Adds Chesley: "School bus manufacturers often try to get away with arguing to legislators and courts that seat belts and non-crush roof and side supports just aren't the state of the art. We intend to bury that archaic argument once and for all. A manufacturer whose harmful product could have been made safer can't defend itself by saying 'We didn't have to change it because the federal government never ordered us to.' We all know a parent couldn't put a single child in a car today that's not equipped with seat belts and proper supports; yet bus manufacturers and school boards put 25 million of our children in exactly that kind of vehicle every day. This has to stop."

Philip Taliaferro, counsel for the family of another boy injured in the crash, Jacob Clise, also plans to sue the bus manufacturers in his case.

CONTACT: Stanley M. Chesley
(513) 621-0267

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