A school bus in East Moline was transporting local elementary school children en route to a local field trip when it was struck by a dark red sedan around 9:00 in the morning on Monday, May 18, 2015. The bus was going eastward on 17th Avenue when it was hit by a car moving northward on 7th Street. The drivers of both vehicles sustained injuries in the crash, though none of the injuries were reported as being life-threatening and the bus driver was allegedly evaluated and treated at an area hospital before being released later that day. None of the 48 children on board at the time were injured in the incident.
All four dozen of the children were taken via another bus to their field trip after it was established that none of them had been hurt in the accident. The superintendent for the East Moline School District, Mr. Kristin Humphries, expressed gratitude for the swift response of the first responders, including firefighters, paramedics, and police officers who arrived to the scene of the accident quickly. He also made a statement lauding the driver of the bus as a skilled, valuable veteran driver with 23 years of career experience. The driver’s identity has not been released at this time.
The driver of the sedan has been identified as Samuel Perry, aged 23. Perry was charged with failure to obey a traffic signal and driving at an unsafe speed. It is not clear whether Perry may have run a red light or perhaps attempted to speed through a yellow light, although he is considered to be the at-fault party in the crash. The sedan sustained moderate damage to the driver’s side doors and front end. Damage to the bus appeared to be mostly limited to the bumper closest to the door where children board and deboard the bus.
According to a report released by the Illinois Department of Transportation, there were more than 1,500 crashes involving a school bus in the 2013 calendar year, the last year for which statistics were available. Of those, more than 70 bus drivers were injured as a result of the collisions. Five fatalities resulted from collisions involving school buses that year.