Speeding drivers, flawed road: Smithville school bus crashed on street with known hazards
Within an hour of a rural Clay County road reopening following a bus crash that sent two students and the driver to the hospital, nearby residents were pulling off the road to investigate the crash scene themselves.
One neighbor and parent said he often sees school bus drivers speeding on Mt. Olivet Road, where the crash happened just after 8 a.m. Monday. Another neighbor and former Smithville school board member pointed to a flaw in the road near the crash site, which she said can make for an unexpected road hazard.
While no answers were immediately available regarding what caused the bus to swerve across both sides of the road, then overturn, authorities said they were grateful the wreck wasn’t worse.
The two students who were taken to the hospital with minor injuries sustained when the bus overturned were released by 2 p.m. Monday, officials said. The bus driver was set to be released later in the day.
The crash is under investigation by the Clay County Sheriff’s Office.
2 students, driver, injured
At about 8:06 a.m., deputies with the Clay County Sheriff’s Office responded to the school bus crash on Mt. Olivet Road, near Jami Drive and Northeast 120th Street, said Sarah Boyd, a spokeswoman with the sheriff’s office.
Twenty-nine elementary students from the Smithville School District were on the bus at the time, Boyd said, adding that by the time authorities arrived, many kids were getting off the bus on their own.
“We’re just so happy that no one was seriously hurt,” she said.
Two of the students, along with the driver, were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, authorities said. Parents picked up the rest of the children at the scene.
The traffic safety unit at the sheriff’s office is investigating what caused the crash. They said no other vehicles or animals are initially believed to be involved in the wreck.
The bus belongs to DS Bus Lines, Boyd said, though she didn’t know details of the bus driver’s experience.
“This is a two lane, kind of country road, so you’ve got to really pay attention and be on top of things,” she said. “There’s no shoulder, so it’s kind of unforgiving.”
White paint remained on the pavement from where investigators measured the skid marks left by the bus as they work to determine what led to the crash. Boyd said most buses are equipped with interior cameras, which investigators will also review if available.
“It appears (the bus) went, from what our investigators told me, to one side of the road, overcorrected and rolled … we’re not sure what made the bus overcorrect, but we’re working to figure that out,” she said.
The crash blocked Mt. Olivet Road in both directions for a few hours Monday morning, but the road was reopened before 11 am.
Safety concerns
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,” the man, who declined to be named in the paper, told The Star. “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 25 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 winding, too hilly and too narrow,” he said. “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 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.
A large stain of fluid from the bus was still visible in the early afternoon on the pavement above a culvert under Mt. Olivet Road.
Sandy Van Wagner pointed out the spot and said in the decades she’s lived in the area, she’s always known it to be a hazard.
She said if a driver heading north were to get a little too close to the edge, their tire could easily sip off the roadway, causing them to flip over into the steep ditch below.
“I can’t tell you how many unfortunate accidents we have seen there over the years,” said Van Wagner, a retired Park Hill teacher and a former Smithville school board member who lives off Mt. Olivet Road, estimating she’s seen single vehicle crashes there about once a month.
So when she heard the news Monday, she wasn’t too surprised once she saw the site of the crash, though it’s not yet clear if the bus driver initially lost control at the culvert or before it, or why they lost control.
Van Wagner said she hasn’t noticed buses speeding like the other neighbor noted, though she has seen other vehicles speed. Plus, deer often jump out in front of vehicles, which can cause drivers to swerve.
“If your tire goes off the road at that spot, you’re airborne and there’s nothing you can do about it,” she said. “You can’t stop it, because there a flaw in the road.”
The school district’s response
Denise Harwood, Superintendent of the Smithville School District, told media Monday afternoon that when she arrived to the scene of the crash hours earlier, the students and parents were “amazingly calm.”
She said after the two students were taken to the hospital, the other 27 students were triaged at the scene, then released to their parents. While some parents and their students chose to stay home the rest of the day, Harwood said counselors would be made available for any students who needed it as they returned to the classroom.
Harwood thanked the first responders as well as “a handful of good Samaritans nearby” who tended to the students as they escaped the overturned bus.
She declined to take any questions from media at the news conference, but added that the bus company was also investigating the incident internally.
Whitney Carlyle, a school board member and parent to two Smithville elementary school boys, both of whom her husband drove to school this morning, stood nearby during the press conference.
She lives off the road where the crash happened and could hear the sirens Monday morning, but Carlyle declined to comment on any possible future conversations by the school board about the bus contractor or the bus route.
“I just felt sick knowing the kids and families were experiencing that,” she said, later adding, “thinking about those kids, I wish I could give them all a hug right now.”
This story was originally published September 12, 2022 at 3:58 PM.
