Bus Collides with SUV and Semi-Truck, Leading to Eight Deaths

By Thomas Greer | November 2, 2013

In of October of 2013, a bus carrying senior citizens returning from a jubilee that had been held in Gatlinburg, Tennessee crossed the center median and collided with a Chevy Tahoe and a tractor-trailer.  Six people on the bus were killed, along with a passenger in the SUV and the driver of the commercial truck.  Fourteen other people were injured, some quite severely.  The crash was horrific enough that a fire erupted, burning some of the victims of the crash to the point where identification was made difficult.

A further complication of this terrible crash was that the investigation was hampered by the recent government shutdown because investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), who regularly investigate serious crashes like these where many people have died, were furloughed and unavailable.  This may result in some evidence not being collected or some documents not being gathered in time to prevent destruction.  This is not a critique of the local investigators, merely an observation that local resources are usually overwhelmed when there is a crash involving so much tragedy.

This crash highlights a number of problems that occur with a large truck accident.  In this case, the bus apparently was the cause of the crash, having veered into the path of oncoming traffic.  However, the severity of the crash was due to the size and weight of two of the three vehicles involved in the accident.  Both the bus and the tractor-trailer have significant mass and are not able to maneuver easily.  This means that when a vehicle of this size does get into a dangerous situation, such as having a large bus approaching in its lane of traffic, it cannot move out of the way fast enough to avoid a collision.  The forces of the resulting impact are much greater than in a passenger car crash.  Moreover, the crash involved a head-on or offset crash where the bus was traveling towards oncoming traffic, increasing the impact forces.

Another problem with a crash like this is the collection of evidence.  This crash occurred on Interstate 40 in eastern Tennessee.  This is a well-traveled roadway where evidence of what happened will quickly be damaged or destroyed as the result of the vehicles moving through the accident scene.  If evidence is not collected immediately, the accident reconstruction will not be accurate and victims may not get the justice they deserve.  This is particularly true where the NTSB investigators were not able to get in and investigate the accident in this case.  The magnitude and loss of life warranted expert investigators who excel in determining what really happened in accidents like these.  The loss of this expertise compounds the terrible tragedy and the effect that it had on discovering all the answers to what happened may never be known.

Victims who have been injured in an accident with a commercial truck usually suffer extreme harm as a result of the size and weight of the tractor-trailer.  Although it appears that the bus caused the horrific accident on Interstate 40, the reality is that the resulting harm may not have been as severe if a semi-truck had not been involved.   At Bailey & Greer, we understand the complexities of getting the compensation a victim of a tractor-trailer accident deserves.  Our Tennessee truck accident attorneys know how to gather and preserve evidence and will work with experts who can articulate the extent of the physical and economic harm that a truck accident victim has experienced.  To schedule a free and confidential appointment where we can discuss the facts of your case, call us at 901-680-9777.  At Bailey & Greer, we are small enough to care, big enough to fight, and experienced enough to win.

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