Gothamist: Chinatown Bus Flips Over and Off of I-80

Gaurav

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:40:23 -0500

I was on the bus which fell off from the I-80 overpass. If it would have happened 5-10 metres later down the line our bus would have fell of much more steeper on the highway underneath and I would not be writing this now. It was miraculously the trees and bushes which saved us and held the bus to overturn further and also save the engine to get bursted. I was there for a conference and I am now back in UK, Cambridge to reseume my PhD but I will never forget my experience in US. I also recommend people not to take any Chinatown buses. Buses are dirty and drivers very rash, and often not speaking english. Gaurav

kearnj

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:20:02 -0500

These guys haul ass on 80, it was difficult to keep up with them at times considering they are doing the average speed of everyone else.

TheTruth

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 10:58:55 -0500

Also, the cause of the accident was caused by our driver not trying to stop...if our driver was paying attention, he could have stopped in time. Thus, I don't consider it tailgating.

ny_busrider

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 05:27:10 -0500

@Spiritof76 your first comment was true/correct in every way......well, because you are correct about what happens out there. Your second comment has the correct definition of tailgaiting, which is great, but is it important that you point out your knowledge of the term "tailgatting" just because one of my coworkers said (in a 100% unbiased way) what happened? I don't think anybody on our bus knows if our driver was tailgating...I don't think anybody does because we were preoccupied watching Rambo. But I do know one of our coworkers noticed we were coming up really fast on the rear end of the bus in front of us and had to yell "STOP STOP STOP" before the driver ever put the brakes on (as was previously stated). Everybody on our bus saw the bus we rear ended bust through a 3 foot concrete wall and go over the edge of an overpass. From our vantage point nobody knew what was on the other side....we saw it bust through the wall and take a nose dive down and was gone. It literally looked like the movie "Speed", exepct it didn't fly 200 feet through the air and make it to the other side. It went 10 feet and disappeared in a nose dive... Taking all of .25 seconds. At first everybody on our bus thought it was our 2nd bus, and that 1/2 our studio just died, falling to the freeway below. 30 seconds later we realized it wasn't ours and thought we just sent a bus full of innocent vacationers to thier death onto the freeway 30 ft below. Luckily nobody died and the bus only went over a 10 ft drop before landing on a very steep hill... As the interior of our bus started to fill with smoke we all climbed out of the emergency windows and the first 5 people out ran down to the ravine below and literally helped people out of the over turned bus that our DRIVER rear ended. From there everybody knows what happened because of the news reports. Thank you sir/ma'am for telling that us our bus was tailgaing. There's alot of places on the internet to spout your "correctness" about a word or term. The way you did it in this thread, is not one of those places.

Spiritof76

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 23:03:48 -0500

Isn't the definition of tailgating that you're too close to the vehicle ahead to stop in time? The distance between vehicles should increase as speed increases, i.e. not a matter of too fast but too close. That would indicate your bus was tailgating.

TheTruth

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:22:44 -0500

I was actually on the other bus. It wasn't a chinatown bus, it was a private charter taking a bunch of software developers (including me) from NYC to a paintball field in eastern PA. I don't know what the bus driver was doing because I was watching Rambo, but another employee of ours had time to yell "STOP! STOP!" and then the bus driver hit the brakes for a second before we hit he other bus. I'd guess we weren't tailgating, just going to fast and not paying attention. The driver in the other bus we chartered said the overturned bus was driving like a maniac, too...some people were saying he had cut off our bus a few times while weaving through traffic. No one on our bus was hurt badly...one of our guys had a split lip and needed stitches, and the rest of us got banged around pretty good. Our company had chartered two busses, and the other one stopped a few hundred feet down the road and some of our other employees had jumped down to the overturned bus and climbed in to help people out. It was a miracle no one was seriously hurt or killed...our bus pinned a few other cars when we ricocheted across the highway, but no one in those cars were hurt either.

Seth Mulvey

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:44:31 -0500

I like risk.

JacqueMehoff

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:31:14 -0500

the other bus was a monsey bus but for some reason very little details are given. the second bus clipped the rear of the first bus causing it to turn into the embankment from speculating news sources.

gopher

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:24:58 -0500

From the story this looks like a tour bus run by white people and filled with ukranians just leaving from chinatown rather than the normal chinese chinatown bus we know and love.

SikBug

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:22:54 -0500

It did say it was another charter, I wouldn't be surprised if it was another china town bus too. Maybe he thought he was in nascar and wanted to get behind the slip stream in order to pass him...

Spiritof76

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:30:38 -0500

Sounds like it wasn't their fault. The second bus may have been tailgating. I wouldn't laugh about this being about a Chinatown bus, either. Have you seen the Greyhound drivers lately? Those maniacs do 70-75mph themselves.

andoman

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 10:16:16 -0500

And I took one of those things. ah!