Central New York Injury Lawyer Blog

Local news sources report that a passing motorist struck and killed a trooper as he was writing another motorist a traffic ticket on the shoulder of Interstate 290 near the town of Tonawanda.

This is every traffic cop’s nightmare. And mine, too. As a Central and Syracuse New York car accident lawyer who has represented several police officers and deputy sheriffs struck by negligent motorists, I am particularly sensitive to the risks our law enforcement officers voluntarily assume every working day to protect the rest of us from law breaking motorists.

There they are, hunched over the driver’s window of a stopped car on the shoulder of the roadway, within inches of the roadway itself, exposed to the risk of distracted drivers running them over. I always worry about how close some of the vehicles are passing by. These police officers risk their lives every time they write a ticket! Fortunately, most, but not all, passing motorists have the common sense to slow down and move over to the left to give the guy some space.

So here’s another upstate New York school bus accident. This one in Victor. About 9 a.m. this morning, a Victor Central School District bus was stopped on School Street to pick up some students, with its warning lights and stop sign activated, when another Victor school bus, instead of stopping and waiting, tries to go around it, strikes it, then strikes a car stopped and waiting just ahead, and jumps the curb.

Ten people, nine of them children, were taken to local hospitals.

So here was the question I asked of my blog readers earlier today: “What the heck was that second bus driver thinking?” I mean, driving past a stopped school bus is just about the biggest traffic offense out there (that’s why it’s a 5-pointer), but can you believe that a school bus driver would do that?

Hey, have you noticed a surge in New York bus accidents recently? Within the last few months I have blogged about several Central and Syracuse New York bus accidents. You can read those blogs here, here, and here . Then, just last week, a bus veered off Interstate 95 in the Bronx as it was returning to Chinatown (NY) from an overnight outing at a Connecticut casino. Witnesses, including survivors, dispute the driver’s claim that that a truck clipped the bus before it ran off the road.

The bus was carrying Asian immigrants back to Chinatown (NY) from a casino outing in Connecticut. Fifteen of them never made it home — they ended up dead instead. And they were just out to have some fun gambling. I’ll bet they had no idea they were gambling with their lives just by climbing aboard the bus. But they were: Turns out the bus driver had a history of driving offenses so significant that his license had been suspended. But there’s more; he had also served time for manslaughter and grand larceny.

Now you tell me, what kind of a bus company would hire a driver with felony convictions and a driving record the size of a phone book? Answer: A cheap, fly-by-night, profit-hungry one. You see, they can hire ex-cons with lousy driving records and suspended licenses on the cheap, which drives up their profit margin. Only problem is their customers end up getting killed. As long as they pay first, no problem, right?