2 students, driver hospitalized after school bus overturns Monday in Smithville
Editor’s note: The Clay County Sheriff’s Office originally misstated the name of the school bus company involved. DS Bus Lines is the current transportation provider for the Smithville School District.
A school bus crash Monday morning in Smithville left two children and the bus driver hospitalized after the vehicle turned on its side, authorities said.
A little after 8 a.m., deputies with the Clay County Sheriff’s Office responded to a crash on Mt. Olivet Road, near Jami Drive and Northeast 120th Street, where a school bus had overturned, Sarah Boyd, a spokeswoman with the sheriff’s office, said in a news release.
About 30 elementary students from the Smithville School District were on the bus at the time, Boyd said. Two of the students, along with the driver, were taken to the hospital with injuries that appeared to be minor, authorities said. The rest of the children were released to their families at the scene.
The traffic safety unit at the sheriff’s office is investigating what caused the crash. They said no other vehicles were involved in the wreck. The bus belongs to DS Bus Lines, Boyd said.
One parent of a Smithville School District student who lives just down the road stopped by the scene late Monday morning to look at the tracks. His child was not on the bus that crashed.
“The bus drivers drive like they’re in a passenger car and not hauling people’s children. It’s not sat well with me for a long time … we’re lucky it hasn’t happened before now, actually.”
The roads are narrow - two lanes with no shoulder. He said he’s previously followed a bus on the same road, where the speed limit is 45 on the straight-aways, and noticed his speedometer was at 60 mph.
On either side of the crash site, which is a slightly hilly straight-away, are two curves, each with speed limits of 29 mph. He said in the past five years, he’s made two complaints about speeding bus drivers to the school district. He said the district said they’d pass his concerns on to the bus company.
“The roads just too windy, too hilly and too narrow. I’m not saying that this bus driver was speeding because I don’t know the situation, I’m just saying I’ve seen it and witnessed it many times.”
He said it seems like the driver escaped what could have been a much more tragic incident today as he looked out over the stretch of tire marks that started in one lane, swerved into the dirt on the other side of the road and then came back up onto the pavement where the bus came to rest on its side.
“I’m just kind of sick that it happened. It didn’t have to.”
The crash blocked Mt. Olivet Road in both directions, Boyd said. The road was reopened before 11 am.
This story was originally published September 12, 2022 at 10:35 AM.
