School Bus Accident Attorney Des Moines IA
Contact a School Bus Accident Lawyer Des Moines IA Trusts Today For a Free Consultation. 515-493-4878 or via email.
Child injured while on a school bus? The school bus accident lawyer Des Moines IA parents rely upon can help you!
According to the National Association for Pupil Transportation (NAPT), approximately 26 million students per day are entrusted to one of approximately 480,000 bus drivers for transportation to and from school. The number of bus passengers increases when you take into account students traveling to field trips and sporting events. With the sheer number of kids who ride a bus, accidents and injuries will happen.
School Bus Accidents
When school bus injuries occur, the school bus accident lawyer Des Moines IA trusts will work tirelessly to ensure your child’s rights are protected and that they are fairly compensated for the full extent of their injuries.
The school bus accident lawyer Des Moines IA rely upon have successfully represented many families whose kids have suffered school bus injuries including:
• J. Williams, a hemophiliac, was a passenger on a school bus which was involved in a rear-end crash with another bus. Upon impact, Mr. Williams suffered a serious bleed in his hip which required emergency medical care as well as ongoing treatment.
• K. Schmitz was a ten year old child with severe learning disabilities. Due to the school bus driver’s negligence, Mr. Schmitz was able to pull open the side door of the bus and jump out at which time he landed on his head and suffered a brain injury.
• T. McBride, then a second grade student, was injured when the bus on which he was riding was involved in a t-bone accident. His injuries required hospitalization and a lengthy stretch of physical therapy.
The examples above are but a sampling of bus injuries. The types of injuries a child can sustain while on a bus are unlimited and can include brain injuries and wrongful death.
Sexual Assault on School Bus
Physical injuries stemming from bus crashes make up the majority of bus cases that we see. However, tragically, cases also arise in which children are sexually or physically assaulted by a bus driver, bus attendant, or another student. If your child was injured, physically, emotionally, or mentally, while on a bus, contact us now for a free consultation.
Legal Issues Involving Bus Injuries
The legalities surrounding bus accidents and injuries share some similarities with car accidents and truck accidents but they do have their own unique issues. For example, in a bus case, it must be determined:
• Who owns the bus?
• Who was driving the bus?
• Is there a contract between the bus company and the school district?
• What does the contract say?
• Is there any contract between any parties dealing with student bussing?
• Are there “immunities” that might protect the bus company or the school?
• What type of safety inspections are performed on the bus?
• Are there current background checks on an offending bus driver?
• What type of training did the bus driver receive?
As can be imagined, this list can go on and on. Thus, it is important that the lawyer you choose is experienced in bus injury cases, like the school bus accident lawyer Des Moines IA parents trust with their children’s rights.
School Bus Safety
Fortunately, school busses are typically quite safe. In fact, studies have shown that school busses are, statistically, the safest mode of ground transportation. Evidence of this fact can be found in our recent blog posting about 32 students involved in a bus accident yet, apparently, there were virtually no injuries.
The reasons school busses tend to be safe include their large size relative to other cars, the bright yellow color improves visibility and thus helps reduce accidents, school busses tend to be driven at slower speeds than a typical car, driver’s sit higher than most traffic which provides the driver with a good visibility, and driver training.
That all said, accidents and injuries can, and will, happen.
Why Don’t School Busses Have Seat belts?
Federal law dictates that busses under ten-thousand pounds must have seat belts. However, that law does not apply to the more commonly seen large busses. School busses use “passive restraint” (as opposed to seat belts) in which, they contend, all a passenger has to do to be protected is sit in the seat.
It is believed by some that this passive restraint system is an effective means to be safe due to the high seat backs and thick padding found on the backs and bottom of the seats. Further, school busses are built to be safe with some estimates indicating they are approximately forty times safer than a standard passenger car.
Additionally, given that people from one to one hundred might be riding the same bus, arguments are made that the addition of seat belts would be extremely difficult as proper fitting seat belts vary from person to person depending on size.
Finally, in addition to the above reasons, school busses don’t have seat belts due, in large part, to money. That is, the cost of installing seat belts on every bus in the country would be cost prohibitive. Therefore, using a cost / benefit analysis, it has been decided by some that seat belts just aren’t “worth it”. A position that our Iowa personal injury attorneys strongly disagree with.
Contact the School Bus Accident Lawyer Des Moines IA Residents Have Trusted for Years
If you or a loved one was injured, in any way, while on a bus, contact us today for a free consultation. We can be reached at 515-493-4878 or via email.
In addition to bus injuries, we handle a wide variety of other child injuries.
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