BOSTON (WHDH) - Dashboard camera video, released as part of a new lawsuit, shows the moment a school bus crashed off the road outside a Boston school in December.
According to the suit, a third grader with autism was badly hurt in the Dec. 6 crash. The video shows the driver of the bus appear to be sleeping.
As the driver wakes up and begins steering, the video shows the school bus jump onto the sidewalk and directly hit a student as he is walking with a school aide.
The video was released by attorneys for the child in a lawsuit against Transdev, the bus company that transports Boston Public Schools students.
“The video is astonishing. It’s outrageous. It’s striking. Its inexplicable,” said attorney Tucker Merrigan.
The crash happened near the Curley School in Jamaica Plain. The injured 8-year-old’s attorneys said the child suffered a broken femur and spent months in the hospital. His lawyers said he is also dealing with post-traumatic stress from the crash.
“He is fighting through it every day. He’s got external hardware put into his body to support his bones that are growing,” Merrigan said.
Merrigan said the driver gave police several different accounts of what happened, claiming mechanical failure, hitting the gas instead of the brake, and trying to avoid a car that cut in front of the bus.
“We have the whole incident on video. There’s no other vehicle. The vehicle was in park before it became engaged and drove up through the sidewalk,” Merrigan said.
The video also appears to show a bus monitor also napping in the back. That person pops up as the bus goes off the road.
“We need to know not just what happened, we have to understand why it happened, because if we don’t understand why it happened, we won’t be able to prevent it from happening again,” Merrigan said.
Transdev did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The bus company is being investigated following a fatal crash that happened in April.
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