FARMINGTON, Maine — A Mt. Blue School District bus and a tractor-trailer collided head-on Tuesday afternoon, requiring five students to be taken to Franklin Memorial Hospital.
The bus was stopped at about 2:40 p.m. in front of the Life Enrichment Advancing People office on the Farmington Falls Road when the accident occurred, Superintendent Mike Cormier said.
Fourteen students — Josh Lasher, Megan Lasher, Lily Swearinger, Lea St. Laurent, Natalie Fahn, Roshan Luick, Brian Durrell, Sydney Coldwell, Kiesha Daggett, Brandon Durrell, Austin Hardy, David McDonald, Jacques Hebert and Ryan Voter — from Mt. Blue Middle and High schools were on the bus. Several received bruises and cuts. Authorities did not identify which five were taken to Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington.
Their injuries included cut lips and bruised noses, Farmington police officer William Tanner said. They were able to walk off the bus to waiting NorthStar ambulances, he said.
The 1994 school bus, driven by Gerard Simard, 71, of Jay had just come down High Street and stopped at the sign to enter Route 2. After entering the highway, he put on his yellow lights to stop and let off a student.
A pickup truck driven by Sean Lynch of Brooks was traveling in the opposite lane and stopped for the school bus when the lights came on.
“I looked at the school bus driver and he was frozen,” Lynch said at the scene.
He said he started to wonder why the driver was bracing himself and glanced in his rearview mirror to see a tractor-trailer bearing down on his truck.
Michael Matheny, 39, couldn’t stop the 2005 International tractor-trailer from hitting the pickup, so he went around it and tried to pull back into the eastbound lane.
He didn’t make it and struck the bus head-on, sending it backward about 30 feet, Lynch said.
Students called their parents from the bus and several arrived to pick up their children.
“They are obviously shaken and several students received minor injuries,” Mt. Blue Middle School Principal Gary Oswald said at the scene. He said school officials also contacted parents.
Police said the bus driver injured a knee but was walking around after the accident and appeared to be fine.
The truck driver, who was not injured, was driving for FW Madden of Akron, Ohio. He had just picked up a full load of lumber in Dixfield and was heading back to Ohio via Route 2 to Augusta. He didn’t realize he could have gone down Route 4, Tanner said.
Police said he was driving about 25 mph in a 45-mph zone, but slick roads affected his ability to stop.
No charges were expected, Tanner said.
Cormier said district officials advised the parents of the children not taken to the hospital to keep an eye on them and to seek treatment if they feel they were injured or if concerns emerge during the evening.
Recent snow made driving conditions “greasy,” Cormier said.
A Maine State Police officer from the Commercial Vehicle Weight and Measures unit arrived to reconstruct the accident.
The bus and the truck were removed from the scene by Collins Wrecker, Tanner said.
To see more from the Sun Journal, visit sunjournal.com.
Gee i thought these types of trucks were all supposed to be on the interstate. Another case of traveling to fast for conditions especially if he had to pull out in the oncoming lane to avoid hitting one vehicle and ended up hitting another.
The article says the truck was from Ohio. His GPS likely failed to point out that secret section of interstate, between Farmington and Newport. zzzzzzzzzzzz….
And 25 in a 45! A REAL maniac, like ALL truck drivers! Right Tom? A GOOD driver would have simply mowed down and likely killed the fellow in the pickup! RIGHT!
A truck from Ohio? what difference does that make?, and if he has a failed GPS, what difference does that make? That would mean you do it the old fashioned way. And he wouldn’t have had to plow into the truck in front of him, there’s always the ditch, but never the bus! He chose to try to go around it. BUST HIM!
Agreed, as a former truck driver I would have done a ditch dive to the right.
NEVER would I have chanced connecting with a bus, never.
Nor do you dive to the left, there could be a kid there.
Also doing a rapid lane change with a flatbed full of lumber put everyone there at risk had the load broken loose and headed for the bus.
He should never drive an 18 wheeler again, this should be a good warning to him to perhaps persue a new career.
I would have taken the ditch on either side, or the pick-up if i couldnt take the ditch! Less possible injuries and after driving over a million miles with no accidents and only two close calls i would have to say that just like automobiles there are some people who shouldnt drive trucks ! How ever after stating what i would have done one doesnt know all the facts and possibilities unless one is in the drivers seat !
“The 1994 school bus, driven by Gerard Simard, 71, of Jay had just come down High Street and stopped at the sign to enter Route 2. After entering the highway, he put on his yellow lights to stop and let off a student.” There is a trailer park behind the LEAP building which would have been on the right of the truck driver. Had he gone that way, he could have hit the kid that was being dropped off. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Let’s hang him at the stake!
If 25 mph is too fast for conditions, then you go slower or get off the road.
Somewhr(not close to Farmington)inmaine If you looked at a map you would realize that this truck was heading to the interstate as I-95 doesn’t go near Farmington. Or Dixfield where he was heading from. Granted he could have taken Rt. 4 through Jay to Auburn to hit the interstate, the first part of your comment is useless.
Traveling too fast? Did I miss something? It said he was going 25 in a 45, which seems like a significant reduction in speed limits to allow for weather conditions if you ask me
unfortunately for a lot of people the truck driver is ALWAYS wrong
Well, he did hit a stopped school bus, not the other way around. I would call that the smoking gun of guilt! lol.
Yes, I can see that. Yet I’d tend to feel much safer riding on a road with ALL truck drivers in my tiny little car than I would sharing the roads with all the idiots who slam their brakes on and pull out in front of those trucks
Sometimes, 5 mph is too fast for conditions. Besides, that is from the driver’s version of things. I doubt anyone had him on radar.
@somewhrinmaine … maybe you should invest in a reading comprehension class.
They haven’t charged the last 2 truckers who actually killed people by going too fast (Farmington as well?)/sleeping,(Jackman?) etc., so it will be interesting to see how this washes out.
The truck driver was doing 20 mph Under speed limit
And he was still going too fast for conditions. Not very professional.
Then why was the bus out?
Why was anyone out? My girlfriend drives a school bus. They seem to get the cancellations right most of the time. Just coincedence that it was a bus he collided with. Again, too fast for conditions. Sometimes 5 MPH is too fast.
——————————
Well the picture doesn’t show much I can’t
say if he was going too fast or not for road
conditions
All I can say
was according to the article he was not speeding.
He lost control of his rig and hit a bus. He was going too fast for the conditions, he couldn’t stop in time. Again, sometimes 5 MPH is too fast for conditions.
——————————
He’s not about to say whether he was paying strict attention to business. From high up in his cab, the view he had from the direction is of a fairly straight, flat stretch of road. Certainly the pickup didn’t block his view.
You might be right but everyday on my 20
mile drive to work, very few people are paying
attention. About 1 in 50 cars use their blinker, not
tailgating not talking or texting on phones. Pretty
bad odds all the way around.
Glad nobody was seriously hurt :)
Collided? The school bus was stopped – the truck ran into a stopped bus.
I have to wonder if any kids would be injured if the bus had seat belts on it?
Why does the government have enough sense to tell a grown man in his own vehicle he NEEDS to have a seat belt but, our kids are put onto a bus 50 at a time with no belts for them.
How long before this happens and kids die?
Lap belts would be more damaging than no seat belts. School buses will not come equipped with propper restraints till it is mandated. Alas that will be next to never.
Some school busses do have seatbelts ( lap belts ).
I knew someone would start in with the seat belt thing. School bus seats are designed to keep kids safe in any collision where seat belts would help. You put seat belts on busses and I guarantee you more injuries will occur from kids slapping each other with the buckles. Also, in a fire, who’s going to cut all those kids loose so they can escape properly?
Because the kids ruin the seat belts by cutting them, jamming things in the recieving ends, little kids chew and suck on them. writing on them. They won’t keep them on. It was tested years back and within a week about half of the seats belts were destroyed. Imagaine the cost of replacing 50 or more a week. At the end of a school year it would cost more for seat belts then it cost to educate a bus load of kids. They found high seat backs work pretty well.
Bet the next time this happens he puts her in the ditch REAL fast.
This is probably every parent’s and medic’s worst nightmare. Glad he was only doing 25 mph, but he incorrectly thought he could get around the truck and back in his lane with the existing road conditions. He should have been able to see the bus over the pickup. Wonder what had his attention?
This trucker couldn’t have been paying attention like he should have, especially if he was only going 25, come on, chances are he came up on that pickup truck not realizing that it was stopped and his reaction time wasn’t fast enough. Maybe this man was over tired like most truckers are in this country. Very happy that no lives where taken………………
“Several received bruises and cuts. ”
One of the first things taught in news writing class is that you don’t “receive” injuries.
What would be the propper word of choice????
Sustained.
Thanks, I can now sleep at night…LOl..
Call me if the dreams come back.
rest easy-you are forgiven…lol…
Or,proper…
Damn, I mispelt proper…LOL.
Seems like there’s been a lot of bus accidents this year….as my dad always told me, it doesn’t matter what the conditions are or who was doing what, if you’re not actively looking for that giant yellow monster on a school day afternoon you shouldn’t be driving.
This is one of those worst parent nightmares hearing that there was a bus in a head on makes your stomach flip :) glad everyone turned out ok!
So lets increase the weight of this truck to 100,000 lbs for the next go around and see what happens to a bus load of kids when they get hit. The owners of shipping companies support the legislation to increase truck weights and the argument almost always revolves around road damage. True, these heavy behemoths do indeed damage the roads. Beyond that it is hard to quantify all the ramifications of loosening restrictions on trucks but clearly this is an example of what can happen when things don’t go as planned. Imagine that this truck had tandem trailers, what then? How about a load of toxic waste? Or, the aforementioned 100,000 lbs which MIGHT have really done some serious damage. This accident is a great example of why it is wrong to have big trucks with 53’ trailers and 100,000 gross weight on our roads. Oh, I don’t care if the driver was going 5 mph he was obviously going to fast for the conditions. I am shocked that he won’t be charged with negligent driving.
I hate to break it to you, but Route 2 is and has always been a 100,000lb road with a triaxle trailer, and 88,000lbs with the regular tandem trailer, so 100,000lb trucks go up and down that road everyday. It is the Interstate that the pilot program boosted to 100,000 to try and get the heavier trucks off these secondary roads. Otherwise great rant, lets end trucking completely, it’ll only take about 3 or 4 days before store shelves are empty. And with all those trucks off the road you won’t have to worry about roads, with the hundreds of millions of dollars they pay in fuel tax annually no longer being collected, there won’t be any roads because there will be no money to build them.
I think you deliberately chose not to read my comment correctly. So let me clarify to those who cannot read well Dane. If the truck DID weigh 100,000 lbs then maybe he could have stopped BEFORE hitting the bus had he only weighed 80,000. No damage, no one hurt. If he weighed 80,000 and still hit the bus then imagine the damage he would have done had he weighed 100,000 lbs. Twice the damage, a lot more injuries. Is my point clear? As for the trucking industry, once again you chose to warp what I said. I said bring back rail and use trucks for local delivery from the railhead to retail operations. No loss of goods to purchase at your store this way is there! Finally, the bulk of tax money used for building and maintaining roads does not come from trucks. In fact, much to my chagrin, every election cycle there is yet another bond for repairing roads. If taxes on trucks paid for our roads we wouldn’t need to tax everyone else for roads plus have these fiscally irresponsible road bonds every year would we! It is a documented fact that trucks do more damage to our roads than they pay in taxes to repair said roads. This is a quote from the U.S. Department of Transportation at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/091116/03.htm
“The U.S. Department of Transportation in its most recent Highway Cost Allocation Study estimated that light single-unit trucks, operating at less than 25,000 pounds, pay 150 percent of their road costs while the heaviest tractor-trailer combination trucks, weighing over 100,000 pounds, pay only 50 percent of their road costs.3”
The U.S. Department of Transportation are dolts, first and foremost.I will give you and example. They got together with the EPA and decided to change diesel full to what is known as “Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel.” This type of fuel puts less bad emissions in the air per gallon then what was previously used. Then they added restrictions to engine manufacturers which required the addition of more emissions equipment. Good in theroy, right? Wrong. The diesel doesn’t supply as much bang as the old stuff did, thus the trucks burn more of it to do the same job they used to. So at teh end of the day the truck is still putting out the same amount of emissions. Add on top of that power robbing additions like EGR valves, and guess what? Fuel economy goes down even more! So thanks to the DOT and EPA trucks are using MORE fuel and and pollutions are the same at the end of the day. Yea real geniuses in those departments. It is due to their over burdening regulations that large trucks such as the ones you so despise, have such low returns. Also, trucks over 100,000lbs are in the supreme minority. I know it seems hard to believe, but outside Maine there are very few trucks that are allowed to operate at 100,000lbs let alone over it. Michigan has some, as well as PA, but the vast majority of trucks are 80,000lbs.
Trains won’t work, hate to bust your bubble. We’ve tried it before and the B&A had to buy hundreds of train cars loads of potatoes because they couldn’t get the job done. A truck can load at 5pm in the County and be in Boston 6 hours later. B&A was taking 2 days. Now imagine that was a train car of strawberries that has a very short shelf life… We have so much time sensitive produce and freight, the train is not a viable option.
20,000lbs does not equate to twice the damage… don’t be all fear mongering like that.
Same with the 53′ trailer comment, its fear mongering, a 53′ trailer is not allowed to haul anymore weight than a 48′ or 45′. A 53′ trailer does however allow for distributing that same amount of weight over more area thus making for a smaller “footprint” on the road, thus doing less damage to the road and improving stopping distance.
Think of “Roads” as a corporation. Everyone who buys gas/fuel owns shares in the corporation because the pay fuel taxes at the pump. Trucks are the majority share holder in the corporation, the spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually in fuel tax which goes to building and maintaining roads. Now you in your car pay taxes only on the amount of gallons you buy. A truck pays on the number of miles it runs in a state. It pays at the pump, and there is a formula of how much tax per mile a truck has to pay. If a truck runs 300 mile in Maine and doesn’t buy fuel in Maine to cover that formula then they have to pay that tax out of pocket. Think about that the next time you visit NH and don’t buy gas there. Imagine if there were a tax man waiting at the Maine line when you got back asking you how many miles you drove in NH and assessing you a bill for those miles. So yes, trucks bought and paid for the majority share of the roads you run on everyday. Think the train companies are going to do that? So lets get rid of trucks and see how much we have to borrow to build and maintain roads.
P.S. The very computer you are ranting at me on was brought to you by truck. Look around your house, just about everything in it is there because of trucks. The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the furniture you sit on, the books you read, washer and dryer, and even the kitchen sink, all brought to you thanks to trucks and the dedication and hard work of those men and women who drive them.
You must be a freight company exec. Reread my comments and your points will be answered. I would also recommend a physics and math course to calculate inertia.
I love the comments below from the grammar gods…LOL…
Sure are a lot of know it all’s…
These ‘wackos’ with tractor trailers need to get off the road during storms
In the defensive driving course they tell you to never hit another vehicle head on but to head it for the ditch… At least that’s what I was taught in the course I took when I drove school bus back in the 80’s :-/
Really glad the injuries weren’t any worst !!!
One stopped vehicle or the other stopped vehicle. Head-on doesn’t come into play here.
The bus was a head on it just wasn’t moving :-/ Never the less you avoid a collision at all cost !!!!
The bus driver was injured in the knee,but was walking around and appeared to be fine…..HE WAS IN SHOCK- they are the ones you have to watch,cause they always say they are ‘fine’…hope everyone is okay- this is very scary for anyone- I’ll bet the ER was chaotic…
I suppose there is no way that a bus driver or crossing guard would just put up a sign or turn on lights before they assess the traffic and conditions of the road. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this, some of them think that no matter what that when the sign goes up or lights go on they think you can react instantly. I’ll bet that some of “I’ve got the power” drivers throw those lights on as fast as they can to try and “catch” someone.
“No charges were expected, Tanner said.”
Why not?
Shouldn’t we expect professional drivers who pilot 100,000-pound vehicles to drive them at a speed that is safe for the conditions?
Should at least be charged with failure to keep right and failure to stop for a school bus. It amazes me how so many crashes in Maine result in no charge being filed. In most states a crash REQUIRES at least one ticket be issued.