This should be the biggest story in america but the press just calls it
an 'accident" and moves on as per orders from the auto industry.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5931668.html
16 from Houston churches die as bus plunges off overpass
Aug. 9, 2008, 10:23AM
SHERMAN — The call came in to local police a little after midnight, and
when the first of its officers rolled up to the crash site on U.S.
Highway 75 nothing could have prepared them for what they would see:
Human bodies, lots of them, lay broken and ruined in a tangle of bus
wreckage.
"You've got 50-something people laying everywhere," said Tony Walden, who
hardly knew where to start. Many of the injured, groaning and calling for
help, were trapped in the wreckage. And to make matters worse, their
pleas came out in a foreign tongue — a pretty good definition of chaos,
another officer said later.
It was only when free of the wreckage that she got a full appreciation
for the crash that as of late Friday had killed 16 — a dozen at the scene
— and left the city's Vietnamese community in a state of shock. The bus,
en route to Carthage, Mo., for the annual Marian Days festival, left the
highway and struck a guardrail around 12:45 a.m. It then flipped on its
side before sliding down an embankment.
Right front tire blew out
The cause of the accident remains under investigation by the National
Trans****tation Safety Board. Weather does not appear to be a factor.
Instead attention has focused on the right front tire, which appeared to
blow out.
NTSB said the right front tire was a retread, a violation of federal
safety laws. Federal authorities also said the bus was traveling with a
tem****ary license plate and had a driver with an expired health
certificate.
"The requirement exists not to permit recapped tires on the steer axle
because if there is a loss of tire pressure or delamination (of the tire)
on the steer axle, it's much more difficult to control the vehicle," said
Debbie Hersman, an NTSB board member.
(snip)
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