ANOTHER PREVENTABLE BUS CRASH CLAIMS PENNSYLVANIA VICTIMS
On August 22, 2008, a bus accident occurred in New Jersey sending dozens of people, including victims from Pennsylvania, to Pennsylvania or New Jersey hospitals. The accident happened along Interstate 80 in Roxbury Township, New Jersey about 10:00 a.m. on Friday, August 22, 2008. According to the State Police, one of the buses was braking for traffic and changed lanes, hitting the right rear of the second bus which caused the second bus to go into the median and dip down about 50 feet, causing the bus to overturn. Nearly 100 people were on board both buses. Many victims were from Pennsylvania.
On August 11, 2008, I wrote in my blog of another similar accident that occurred when 17 people were killed and others catastrophically injured when another chartered bus ran off an overpass in Sherman, Texas. In that case, the driver’s traffic record included multiple citations for driving while intoxicated in 2001, for speeding in May 2004 and March 2007 and a suspended license in 2001. For further information, please look at our August 11, 2008 blog.
Consequently, the legal responsibility is owed by bus drivers and bus companies to their passengers and others as a bus is considered a common carrier. A common carrier is an individual company or public utility or city buses which is in the regular business of transporting people and/or freight. These common carriers owe their passengers a greater duty of safety and protection than that of an ordinary car. Common carriers and bus companies have a higher level of responsibility to drive with the utmost care and protect passengers and other vehicles sharing the road. However, despite this imputed higher level of responsibility, results indicate that bus drivers do not always drive safely and in some cases are not trained properly. In many cases such as this, innocent people are killed and/or injured.
Commuters and tourists heading up to the Poconos in Pennsylvania for the weekend faced a mile long backup on Interstate 80 after the two buses mentioned above crashed. Many of the people on board these two buses were Pennsylvania and New Jersey residents traveling to Niagra Falls on holiday. The cause of this crash remains under investigation.
The Pennsylvania motor vehicle accident lawyers of Reiff and Bily is one of Pennsylvania’s most successful personal injury law firms with extensive experience and understanding of common carrier litigation, as well as defectively designed automotive vehicle litigation. We have 30 years of experience handling serious and catastrophic injury litigation and have been highly rated by our peers locally, nationally and internationally. We believe that bus companies and common carriers owe their customers the highest duty of safety and will aggressively fight to get a successful recovery if you or a loved one has been involved in a serious bus accident. The Philadelphia bus accident and motor vehicle lawyers at Reiff and Bily work on a contingent fee basis, charging a small percentage of the recovery. They will not get paid one cent unless there is a successful recovery and we have handled thousands of personal injury cases and successfully recovered in excess of $150 million dollars from our opponents for physical injuries and emotional damages.
