Video shows RideKC bus turned in front of motorcyclist in crash that killed 18 year old

Inside the Kansas City house he helped build from the ground up are reminders of Kyle A. Keating.

There’s his white construction hat with his name under the lid. The cap and gown he was set to wear for high school graduation. The gray backpack he had the day he was killed.

Keating, 18, was riding his motorcycle shortly after 11 a.m. March 3 along 75th Street when a RideKC bus turned in front of him.

Video of the collision shows the bus driver made a left turn as she attempted to enter the RideKC park and ride transit center at 75th Street and Prospect Ave. He tried avoiding the bus by swerving right, video shows, but could not.

The bus driver, who was the only person aboard the bus, was not injured. Keating was pronounced dead at the scene.

The teen was attending Manual Career Tech Center and planned to graduate from Southeast High School in May. Talented with his hands, he was set to join his older brother, Trey Keating, with construction work.

“Kyle was just a natural,” said his father, Robert Keating. “He was going to go far.”

The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority declined to comment about the video and answer questions about the crash because of pending litigation, said Cindy Baker, a spokeswoman for the KCATA.

The Kansas City Police Department has completed its investigation and the case was not being presented to prosecutors for possible charges, said Sgt. Jake Becchina, a spokesman for the department. No citations were issued.

The right-of-way was not determined, according to the narrative of the report.

Police, however, determined that Keating was traveling at least 21 mph over the 35 mph speed limit in the area, according to the crash analysis.

Robert Keating believes there should be safeguards or a policy implemented where RideKC buses have to come to a complete stop before entering the parking lot.

“By all means the policy should be stop before entering — no matter what,” Robert Keating said. “You’re coming up that hill, you really don’t have a field of vision ahead of you at all. It doesn’t make any sense.”

A builder at heart

Robert Keating points out different things inside the four-bedroom house in the Waldo neighborhood.

All the wood inside was the work of his third and youngest son. The window sill, the hardwood floor, the cabinets. On the outer walls of the home are two colors — blue and white — that Kyle Keating was debating painting in the summer.

The house was built a few years ago, when Kyle and Trey Keating tore down the previous house that sat on the lot owned by their dad.

Kyle Keating began doing construction work when he was 13 — he spent that summer and the following one with his father in Columbia. Robert Keating had worked construction his entire life and his son was eager to learn the business.

“He’d been around the job since he was 5 years old,” Robert Keating said. “But this was the first time he really did something that had responsibilities and really decided that he liked it and was going to go into that field.”

Kyle Keating had always liked doing things with his hands and found ways to teach himself things he didn’t know.

As a kid, he loved playing hockey, zigzagging around different states in the Midwest on weekends for tournaments. It was always just both of them on those trips as his brothers stayed with their mom.

As a teenager, he inherited a 2003 Mustang Cobra that needed to be fixed and remodeled. He did it himself. Unfortunately the car was totaled in a car crash several months later when Trey Keating was in a wreck. But Kyle Keating didn’t care about the car. He was just glad his older brother was OK.

He kept the engine and set a goal: he’d get another 2003 Mustang Cobra — the year he was born — and put the old engine in that one.

This was his only year at Southwest — he previously attended Blue Valley High School in Johnson County — and the students and teachers loved him, Robert Keating said. When he first got to the school, he noticed a teacher didn’t have a door stop in her classroom. He built one and installed it the next day.

“I loved joking with you about how you had to stay up all night to make it,” the teacher wrote in his yearbook.

Left turn dangers

Left turns pose a danger for all motorists, but especially motorcyclists.

In 2020, there were 2,741 fatal two-vehicle crashes involving a motorcycle and another type of vehicle and 42% of those crashes involved vehicles that were turning left while the motorcycles were going straight, passing or overtaking other vehicles, according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report released last month.

The collision that killed Kyle Keating was such a crash. It occurred as the bus was turning to cross three lanes — two through lanes and a right turn lane — into the transit center’s parking lot.

The bus was headed west on 75th Street and had just pulled into the left turn lane. Meanwhile, Kyle Keating was headed east.

The video, obtained by The Star through a Missouri Sunshine Law request, shows the bus slowed from 18 mph before the driver started the turn into the parking lot. The bus’ speed dropped to around 11 mph just prior to the crash, according to a speed graph accompanying the video.

One of the views from the bus shows Keating approaching in the left lane of eastbound 75th Street. The video then captures the collision.

“Oh my (expletive) God,” the bus driver is heard saying twice on the video.

The driver got out of the bus to see what happened and immediately returns and grabs a phone on the bus.

“There’s a bad emergency,” she said. “I hit somebody on the motorcycle. 911 emergency. Please I hit somebody.”

The motorcycle struck the front of the bus. There was a tire mark indicating an attempt at emergency breaking by Keating, according to the crash report. He was wearing a helmet.

Robert Keating has not seen the video of the crash. It won’t play on his computer. He doesn’t know if he wants to.

He has the still frames of the video and the last one is when his son is starting to swerve so he can avoid a crash. Robert Keating can’t help but think what if his son had driven through the area seconds sooner or minutes later.

He knows the bus driver was not trying to hurt his son that day. He hopes his death will spur a policy change to make buses stop at the intersection before turning so that other families do not have to go through a similar situation.

“It’s just a lack of policies,” he said.

Kyle Keating was laid to rest Wednesday at the Johnson County Memorial Gardens.

He would have turned 19 this week this Saturday.

Robert A. Cronkleton

The Kansas City Star

816-234-4261

Robert A. Cronkleton is a breaking news reporter for The Kansas City Star, covering crime, courts, transportation, weather and climate. He’s been at The Star for 36 years. His skills include multimedia and data reporting and video and audio editing. Support my work with a digital subscription