An icy patch on a rural road in Indiana is being blamed for an accident involving a car and a school bus packed full of junior high and high school students on Wednesday morning. According to students on the bus, a car slid into the path of the school bus, and the vehicles hit head on. The bus then rolled onto its side.

One of the students on the bus said that several students were injured. One was bleeding badly and one appeared to have a broken arm. The student who told the Herald Bulletin newspaper this also said he was being taken to the hospital because of pain in his legs. It's unknown how many students were injured, but there were 50 on the bus at the time of the accident.

On a somewhat related note, the school district had delayed classes two hours because of the icy roads.

If you have a student who has been injured in an auto accident or bus accident, please contact an experienced personal injury lawyer in your area.

According to a report detailed by National Public Radio, the number one cause of accidental death of children worldwide is traffic accidents. While almost one million children are killed every year in various kinds of accidents, traffic accidents kill almost 830,000. According to Dr. Etienne Krug, director of the Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention at the World Health Organization, "It is like wiping out the entire child and adolescent population of Chicago every year."

These fatalities are mostly found in developing countries, especially in Africa, where road traffic education is still in its infancy. A new road being built in a village may be a good thing for the community as a whole, but the villagers may not understand the dangers that come with motorized traffic on that road. In Asia, Dr. Krug notes the main danger is two-wheeled traffic, such as motorcycles. He says it is not uncommon to see as many as four or five people on one motorcycle. When there is an accident, there are often severe injuries or fatalities.

Even in the US where injury and death is reduced by safety features like seatbelts, child car seats and helmets, traffic accidents remain the main cause of adolescent fatalities.

The CDC and WHO recommend that adolescent injury prevention should be included with child health and child survival programs already in place.

Other leading causes of death for children include drowning, burns, falls, and poisoning.

If your child has been seriously injured or killed as the result of a traffic accident, please contact an experienced personal injury lawyer in your area.

A bus driver and two passengers were killed when the bus crossed a median and hit a tractor trailer and a pickup truck on I-40 in eastern Arkansas. Twelve other passengers were extracted from the bus. Some of them were children. The driver of the tractor trailer and the pickup truck sustained minor injuries.

The bus was owned by Tornado Bus Co. based out of Dallas. The bus was on its way from Chicago to Dallas. The crash occurred around 10 pm Sunday night. However, it is not known at this point if the time of day contributed to the accident. One of the most common causes of accidents involving buses as well as tractor trailers is due to driver exhaustion.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a bus accident, please contact an experienced bus accident attorney in your area.

A school bus carrying 23 students flipped Friday morning in Havelock, North Carolina. All 23 students were taken to area hospitals, but authorities say that none were seriously injured.

The bus was taking the students to Roger Bell Elementary School when the driver apparently swerved to avoid hitting a dog in the road. The school bus then went into a ditch where it flipped onto its side.

School buses are still the safest way to transport students to and from school and, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, are the safest motor vehicles on the road. However, like most buses in the US, they do not contain safety belts. In accidents, such as this one, there is a good chance that students will be thrown off their seats and around the bus. The NHTSA told Congress in 2002 that cost and drawbacks of installing seatbelts in school buses outweigh any benefit they might have.

If your child has been injured in a school bus accident, please contact an experienced personal injury lawyer in your area.

A bus on its way to a casino crashed north of Sacramento, California Sunday night killing ten and critically injuring at least 30. According to one witness, the bus cartwheeled in the air before rolling into a ditch. Victims were either ejected or crushed in the bus accident.

Police say the bus drifted onto the side of the road for half a mile and then the driver overcorrected, which flipped the bus. The driver was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Police believe he was on medication.

Adding mystery to the bus accident, the bus was without a valid license plate, and it is unclear exactly who owns the bus. The bus was sold over two years ago; it dates back to the 1980s and does not have seatbelts. At least 12 people were ejected in the accident.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a bus accident, please contact an experienced personal injury lawyer in your area.

An accident involving a school bus killed four elementary school special needs students and critically injured the driver on Friday in rural Indiana. Emergency workers say it is one of the worst accidents they have ever seen.

The accident happened around 3:00 pm close to an intersection near the town of Logansport. A moped was turning into the driver's residence when a dump truck behind it slammed on its breaks. The dump truck swerved into the school bus, clipping it. The school bus was flipped onto its side and into oncoming traffic where it was hit by another dump truck. Though all four students were buckled into their seats, the force of the impact killed all of them. Emergency workers and reporters on the scene say the wreckage of the bus was virtually unrecognizable.

If your child has been injured or killed in school bus accident, please contact an experienced injury lawyer in your area.

Fung Wah is a bus line popular for low rates in New York City. It's also notorious for being accident prone. The latest accident involving Fung Wah occurred Monday morning. As passengers were waiting to board the bus to its Boston route, it was hit from behind by a dump truck which sent it flying into a bank, crushing 57-year-old Lai Ho who was waiting to board. The accident, which happened at the intersection of Canal Street and the Bowery, also injured four others. The dump truck allegedly lost control as it was exiting the Manhattan Bridge ramp.

Fung Wah was involved in an accident in 2006 when the Boston bound bus overturned, injuring 33 people. Another bus lost its rear wheels as it was en route to New York. Fung Wah has also been in trouble for hiring drivers who do not speak English.

The dump truck is part of the fleet at South Kearney, New Jersey-based CPQ Freight Systems, which has had two fatal accidents this year.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a bus or truck accident, please contact the Accident Lawyers Network to find an experienced personal injury lawyer in your area.

A school bus carrying children on a field trip in the French Alps near the Swiss border was struck by a train killing six of the children. Another 30 were injured. The accident occurred at a level crossing near the town of Allinges in the Haute-Savoire region. A level crossing is any railroad crossing intersected by a path, road, or other railroad where a bridge or tunnel is not present. They may or may not have crossing guards. The crossing in Allinges did have a crossing guard and is reported to have been working correctly.

While this accident took place in Europe, accidents involving trains and vehicles are not unique to those of us living in the U.S. Every year, many people are grievously injured or killed when the vehicle they were traveling in was hit by a train. And many of those involved in accidents of this nature were reported to have gone around the crossing guard or tried to beat the train as they crossed the road. However, there are accidents, such as this one in France, where initial details are sketchy and it is unclear what caused the crash. What is known is that the 50 children and all the adults with the exception of the bus driver were not in control of the vehicle. They were, in a sense, at the mercy of whatever the bus driver was doing. In the U.S., buses are supposed to stop at rail crossings, even if there is no train present. This helps to avoid or eliminate even the slight chance that there is a problem with crossing guards, thus allowing all passengers to get to their destination safely.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a bus or train accident, please contact the Accident Lawyers Network to find an experienced personal injury lawyer in your area.

A dump truck collided with a school bus in northern Kentucky yesterday, killing a student on the bus and sending 12 others to the hospital. The crash occurred along a winding stretch of highway just after 7 am in the rural farming area of Pendleton County, about 40 miles south of Cincinnati.

Pendleton County Sheriff Craig Peoples said, "It is a very crooked road. We have a lot of motorcycle accidents. We have dump trucks turn over at least once a year."

The dump truck was hauling a load of stone from the nearby quarry when it hit the bus. The bus had damage along its driver's side, and all the windows from the center door to the rear of the bus were gone, and the roof was dented. The dump truck flipped after hitting the bus, strewing the load across the highway and a cattle pasture.

The accident occurred near the home of Ronald and Julie Hess who brought the children inside their home after the accident. Mr. Hess's uncle, Richard Hess, blames the narrow roads around the area for the numerous accidents every year. "The road is not wide enough for those trucks," he said. "If we didn't get off the road for them, there would be more accidents." According to Richard Hess, the trucks travel a route of 17 miles from the quarry to the interstate every day.

Standard procedure requires both the dump truck and bus driver to undergo drug and alcohol tests.

If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident involving a truck or bus, please contact the Accident Lawyers Network to find an experienced injury lawyer in your area.

Grammy Award-winning Tejano singer Emilio Navaira, known to his fans simply as Emilio, underwent emergency brain surgery after being critically injured in a bus crash yesterday morning in Houston.

The bus was carrying Navaira and his band when it hit traffic barrels on the Southwest Freeway on Easter morning. Navaira was taken by helicopter to Memorial Herman Hospital. Of the seven other members of Navaira's band, two were taken to Memorial Hermann, treated and released, and the other five were taken to Ben Taub Hospital. Two of the five are listed in critical condition.

At this point, police are unsure who was driving the bus or what caused the accident. Theories of the driver falling asleep, missing a turn on the ramp where the accident occurred, or being intoxicated are all possibilities, according to the police.

If you, or a loved one, have been injured in a bus accident, please contact an experienced personal injury lawyer in your area.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that 474,000 school buses take 25.1 million students to and from school each year. And, on average, fewer than eight passengers are killed in accidents involving school buses each year. According to U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters, this makes riding a school bus one of the safest modes of vehicle transportation in the country. Yet, the NHTSA also shows that, up through 2005, 8,000 students were injured each year in school bus accidents. This is a much smaller number when compared to the hundreds of thousands of injuries reported each year in other motor vehicle accidents, but several groups are looking at ways to make this number even smaller – or perhaps eliminate it altogether.

Federal law does not require students to wear seatbelts, but several states such as California, Texas, and New York require them. There have been several accidents reported lately in the media involving school buses, in which students have been injured or killed in states where seatbelts are not required.

• A bus driver ran a traffic signal in Harrisonburg, Virginia, hitting a car and another school bus. 28 people were injured.
  
• North of Atlanta, Georgia, a school bus overturned injuring several high school and middle school students. Some students suffered head and neck injuries.
  
• In Cottonwood, Minnesota, a school bus hit a van, then a pickup, before rolling over, killing four students and injuring 14.
  
• In Washington, D.C., a school bus driver turned too fast, causing the school bus to flip. Five middle school students were injured.
  

In November 2007, before these accidents, Secretary Peters proposed higher seat backs and seat belts standards on all school buses. While it is unclear if seat belts would have saved the lives of the students killed in Minnesota, most of the injured might have walked away had they been wearing them.

It isn't just the accidents themselves parents and others are concerned about, but what causes them. Driver error is certainly a factor, not just with bus drivers, but with other drivers as well. However, school buses are large vehicles, and when they roll, there is a lot of room inside for students to bounce around, if they are not wearing seatbelts. Perhaps changing the Federal law will make a difference, but there is the assumption that, even without seatbelts, students will get to school safely. It's the obligation of the drivers and school districts to make sure this happens.

If your child has been injured in a school bus accident through negligence or carelessness, please contact an experienced injury lawyer to discuss your case.