Ithaca, NY — A new trainee bus driver may have been the reason that a large TCAT (Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit) bus crashed in a parking lot yesterday evening, leaving 3 people injured. This happened in one of the parking lots on the Ithaca College campus on Monday at about 6:00 p.m., August 24, 2015.
The police said that a trainee was driving the large bus that evening, under the supervision of a more experienced driver, and was trying to loop around in Parking Lot J when something went wrong and the bus crashed into the side of a large retaining wall.
The accident left the bus with serious front-end damage and the trainee driver, supervisor, and a passenger on the bus were all taken to a hospital.
Fortunately, none of the injuries appeared serious.
Right now, TCAT has released a statement detailing the training process for new drivers, but haven’t mentioned if any disciplinary action will be taken.
Map of the Campus
Commentary:
Parking lots can be dangerous places if not simply for the fact that there are a lot of cars moving around and everyone is in a hurry — particularly on a college campus. Add to that the fact that visibility can be sketchy, and you have a high probability for accidents. Nobody seems to really know what happened here, but having a trainee on the bus may not have been the smartest move if the traffic that evening was at all busy.
Now, I realize that accidents happen and perhaps this driver wasn’t quite familiar with the vehicle and all the controls just yet, but that’s not a very good excuse for the people who were injured here — especially the innocent passenger.
— Grossman Law Offices