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A recent bus crash on Interstate 95 in Virginia should never have happened. The driver, Kin Yiu Cheung, 37, fell asleep at the wheel.
Surviving passengers told police that Cheung complained about how tired he was in a cell phone call, saying that he didn't have much turnaround time between trips and had drunk cups of coffee and energy drinks to keep his eyes open.
Cheung started driving the bus, headed for New York's Chinatown, from Greensboro, N.C. on Monday, May 30, 2011, at 10:30 p.m. After a stop in Raleigh, N.C., the bus departed around midnight, and it took the driver almost five hours to reach the place where the crash occurred, a distance normally covered in about three and a half hours. Passengers said Cheung made extra stops, and was so irritable that he would not let passengers off to use a bathroom. The bus crashed at about 4:55 a.m. on Tuesday.
The bus driver's log was outdated, an infringement for which Sky Express had already received 24 violations in the past two years.
The company had also received ten additional out-of-service violations related to a driver's work status, deemed sufficiently serious to require buses to be pulled from service. Numerous out-of-service violations were received for failing to abide by the log book regulations and for employing drivers who could not understand and respond to basic questions in English.
Apart from the devastation brought upon the family and friends of the victims, this tragic accident is even harder to cope with because it was so preventable. Not only do federal regulations clearly establish all the safety rules that bus companies should follow, but in this case the violations were recorded countless times, showing a systematic pattern of utter disregard by Sky Express. The question becomes: How could this company get away with paying fines and keep on carrying passengers?
