Accident Involving Lee County School Bus Results in One Fatality
LEE COUNTY, FL- News-press.com reported that a 23-year-old woman was killed on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 18, 2018, in a collision with a school bus. Taylor Brooke Lee of Fort Meyers was driving a 2016 Volkswagen Jetta when she neglected to yield and drove into the intersection of Corkscrew Woodlands Boulevard and Corkscrew Road and was struck by a school bus.
Lee was brought to Lee Memorial Hospital but died from the injuries she sustained in the accident. Brittany Marie Diaz, 22, was a passenger in Lee’s vehicle at the time of the crash. Diaz was brought to Lee Memorial Hospital where she is reported to be in serious condition. The driver of the school bus, 27-year-old Amanda Leigh Timte, also suffered severe injuries and was brought to Gulf Medical Center.
According to the Lee County Board of Education, the bus was on its way to the school to pick up students, and so there were no students in the vehicle at the time of the crash. The accident is still being investigated.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, the majority of car accidents that involve fatalities or injuries occur at intersections or near intersections. School bus-related accidents are comparatively rare. Between 2004 and 2014, there were 340,039 fatal car accidents in the United States. Of those, only 1,214, or .4% involved vehicles that were used for school-related transport- which means school buses or other vehicles used to transport children to and from school, or to school-related activities such as sporting events and field trips.
When school buses are involved in deadly crashes, the people who are injured or killed are rarely those who were traveling on the school bus. Cyclists and pedestrians account for about 21%, and nearly three-quarters of school bus-related fatalities are of people traveling in other vehicles.
