HERNANDO COUNTY, FL- baynews9.com reports that six of the Hernando High school students who had been riding on a school bus when it was struck by a semi have suffered minor injuries. The crash occurred Wednesday morning on State Road 50 and Interstate 75 on Wednesday morning in Brooksville.*
The accident was the result of the semi running through a stop sign after exiting I-75. The truck hit the rear of the school bus causing the vehicle to tip over onto its side. While six out of the eighteen students aboard the bus are reported to have suffered injuries, none were transported to the hospital as all of the injuries were minor.
The driver of the semi is facing traffic-related charges in relation to the incident.
While traffic accidents are extremely common, serious school bus-related traffic accidents are somewhat rare. Between the year 2004 and 2013, 340,039 fatal traffic accidents occurred in the United States. Of those accidents, only 1,214 involved any school buses or other school transportation vehicles.
Additionally, when school buses are involved in collisions, it is typically pedestrians or the occupants of other vehicles who suffer injuries, and not the passengers on the bus. Bicyclists and pedestrians make up about 21% of school bus-related fatalities, and almost 75% of fatalities resulting from accidents with school buses involve people traveling in other cars. Only 8% of the fatalities are people traveling on the bus.
However, the Hernando High school students traveling on this particular bus are fortunate that the accident was not more serious. Trucks typically weigh between 20 and 30 times as much as the average passenger vehicle and accidents involving these massive vehicles often involve severe injuries.
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