Heartbroken! Three Chinese people died, New York travel bus crashed, suspected of being distracted by the driver

This article is reproduced from the WeChat public account: Chinese Life Network

At noon on August 22, a tourist bus carrying Chinese, Indian and Filipino tourists overturned Interstate 90, about 25 miles east of Buffalo, killing five people and injuring more than 40 people. The accident shocked the Eastern U.S. tourism circle, and local Chinese communities and volunteers also quickly joined the rescue.

at present,Among the five confirmed victims are Xie Hongzhuo (22), a student from Beijing who is currently studying at Columbia University, as well as two Chinese Zhang Xiaolan (55) and Jian Mingli (56) from Jersey City, New Jersey, as well as Pinki Changrani (60) from Brunswick, New Jersey, and Shankar Kumar Jha (65) from India, respectively.

The major traffic accident occurred around 12:40 noon in the Pembroke area about twenty-five miles east of Buffalo, when the bus was driving near the east-to-east exit 48A of I-90. According to the New York State Police investigation, the bus suddenly lost control during driving, first rushed to the central partition, and then the driver quickly turned the steering wheel and the vehicle overturned on the slope on the south side. At the time of the accident, there were 52 passengers on the bus, ranging in age from one to seventy-four, and there were two staff members on board and a driver. Some passengers were thrown out of the car when overturned, and some people were trapped inside the car, and the scene was once in a mess.

After the accident, local emergency rescue forces quickly entered the action, several helicopters rushed to the scene, and many hospitals opened green channels to receive the injured. Erie County Medical Center has admitted twenty-four people, 20 of whom are still under treatment; the Kaleida Health system has admitted twenty injured people, ranging from minor to serious injuries. The police have not yet announced the specific number of injured people of all ethnic groups, so it is not possible to confirm how many Chinese passengers are taking the car. The Red Cross has set up family assistance points at the Elderly Center in Amherst and has opened a dedicated telephone line for outside inquiries. The ConnectLife Blood Center also urgently issued a call for blood donation to supplement a large amount of blood resources required for surgery and treatment.

Local Chinese volunteers also played an important role in the accident rescue process. Ms. Chen, a Chinese volunteer who assisted in the rescue, said that after completing the injury grading, the medical staff had immediately sent the seriously injured to the hospital for treatment. After undergoing X-ray and CT examinations, some of the slightly injured were arranged by the Red Cross to temporarily resettle the hotel and wait for subsequent return arrangements.

She also recruits volunteers who can speak Chinese or Cantonese through social platforms to help some injured communicate with medical staff. She introduced that the injuries of the elderly and children she had come into contact with were not serious, and psychological care was also being carried out simultaneously. Local Chinese residents actively responded to the rescue, and even nearby Asian supermarkets prepared food with a taste for injured Chinese travelers.

New York State police immediately launched an investigation after the accident.Preliminary results show that the driver was suspected of losing control due to distraction during driving, not due to mechanical failure or physical abnormalities.The police have ruled out the possibility of vehicle technical problems and drivers driving drunk and drug impacts.

The driver is currently cooperating with the investigation and has not been prosecuted yet.

The National Transportation Safety Commission has also sent a special investigation team to New York to conduct in-depth evidence of the accident to clarify the specific causes. The police also called on witnesses or insiders to call the hotline to provide more information.

According to bus registration information, the vehicle involved belongs to “M&Y Tour Inc.” registered on Staten Island, New York. The company has a total of twenty drivers and nine vehicles, and received a “satisfactory” rating in September last year during a inspection by the Federal Transportation Vehicle Safety Agency. There has been no accident record under the company’s name in the past two years, but nine of the forty-three vehicle inspections were found to have major safety hazards, involving brakes, tires and steering systems. At that time, the problematic vehicle was ordered to stop and was not put into use again after the repair was completed. The company has not responded to the public after the accident.

The overturn also brought the new seat belt regulations just implemented in New York State again to the focus.Starting in April this year, the state government requires all tourist chartered vehicles manufactured after November 2016 to be equipped with seat belts and are mandatory for passengers over eight years old to use. However, there are obvious vulnerabilities in actual execution. Since the regulations only stipulate that passengers who do not wear seat belts are subject to a fine of $50 and do not clearly define the driver or operator’s responsibilities, the risks still exist when passengers generally ignore the use of seat belts. The police pointed out that most passengers did not wear seat belts in this accident, which is also an important reason for the person being thrown out of the car and suffered heavy casualties.

At present, the accident investigation is still in progress, and local governments and rescue organizations are continuing to provide medical and living support to the injured and their families. This accident not only reveals the safety hazards of long-distance tourism traffic, but also once again triggers the society’s discussion on the supervision of the US tourism passenger operation industry and the compulsory use of seat belts.

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