In another deadly New York tour bus accident, a bus headed from Washington D.C. to Niagara Falls crashed, killing two passengers and injuring 35 others.
According to the Associated Press, the tour bus reportedly blew out a tire shortly before veering off Interstate 390 and overturning about 50 miles south of Rochester. Officials are still investigating the accident to determine the exact cause of the crash. It has not been reported if anyone is at fault in the accident.
The tour bus is operated by Bedore Tours, a company located near Buffalo. The company has a satisfactory safety rating and has no recorded accidents in the past two years, reports the AP.
The clean safety record of Bedore Tours may be surprising given the shoddy records of many other buses involved in tour bus accidents.
Recently, there have been a spate of deadly accidents involving "Chinatown" buses. These are buses that operate out of New York's Chinatown and that offer low fares to passengers up and down the East Coast.
A common denominator in the Chinatown bus accidents has been a long history of safety violations by the bus companies. For example, in the accident involving a bus traveling from Greensboro to Manhattan that killed four, the company responsible for the bus had 46 safety violations in the past two years.
As bus companies carry members of the public, they are considered common carriers and owe a duty of care to protect their passengers. A long history of safety violations can help show that a bus company failed to meet this duty and was negligent in a bus accident.
However, just because Bedore Tours did not have a prior history of safety violations does not mean it will absolutely escape responsibility for the most recent New York tour bus accident.
Related Resources:
- Find a New York Personal Injury Attorney (FindLaw)
- Tour bus from D.C. crashes in N.Y.; 2 dead (The Washington Post)
- Bus Accidents In Northeast The Most Recent In A Decade Long List (FindLaw's KnowledgeBase)
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