Tennessee Injury Law Center

The October 2, 2013 church bus accident on Interstate 40 near Dandridge, Jefferson County, Tennessee that left eight dead and fourteen people injured will result in  lots of people on the ground investigating what happened. The Tennessee Highway Patrol will be present, as well representatives of the liability insurance companies for the church bus and the tractor-trailer company.  Representatives of the National Traffic Safety Board (NTSB) will not be present because of the government shutdown.

What data are the professional investigators looking for and what do they hope to accomplish by their efforts?  First, they want to document the precise location of all physical evidence – the vehicles, tire marks, gouge marks, damage to medians and wire median barrier, protective devices, etc. All of this data will assist experts in determining the events leading to the crash and fire, and provide information about speed of the vehicles involved.

The investigators will attempt to download the "black box" information for each vehicle. Most vehicles these days have "electronic control modules" that capture certain data for a number of seconds before an event (and other data as well). Some older vehicles do not have ECMs, and some fail to work as contemplated, but an effort will be made to get the data if an ECM is available.

Private companies, daycare centers or churches that put passenger buses on the road have a responsibility to exercise reasonable care for the safety of bus passengers.  That rule not only applies to bus drivers, but also the duty of bus owners to maintain the bus in an appropriate condition.

As you would expect,  passenger buses need regular maintenance to be safe.  Belts need to be tightened or replaced, bus tires need to be inspected, rotated and/or replaced, and brakes need to be maintained. The failure to do so can result in the failure of an essential component of the bus system, and result in a bus accident that in turn causes injury or death to bus passengers or other people.  In addition, bus drivers must be trained to not only do the inspection of the buses but also be prepared to handle mechanical failures of the component parts of the bus system.  A multitude of federal regulations apply to protect bus passengers from the errors of bus owners or bus drivers. 

Tennessee law provides compensatory damages and, in limited cases, punitive damages to those harmed by a failure of the owner of a passenger bus to property maintain the vehicle.  Tennessee law has a very strict deadline for taking legal action – the injured person (or the representatives of a deceased person) must file suit within one year of the date of the incident causing the initial injury or death or the injured or deceased persons rights will be lost forever.