T Bus' Camera Captures Moments Before Deadly Crash
Fiery collision leaves one person dead, 3 injured
KXAS
A multi-vehicle collision sparked a MITS bus fire on Loop 820 in north Fort Worth on July 10.
The Fort Worth Transportation Authority (The T) is defending its bus driver who was involved in a deadly chain-reaction crash on July 10 during rush hour.
Newly released video reveals the moments just before the fiery wreck along Loop 820 just west of Interstate 35.
The collision, which killed one person and injured three others, remains under investigation, Fort Worth police said. The preliminary police report, filed the day after the crash, says the T's bus driver contributed to the accident by failing to control his speed.
"Failure to control speed does not mean speeding", said Tony Johnson, the chief operations officer for the Fort Worth T. "Failure to control speed means anytime there is a rear-end collision, or two vehicles touch, or another vehicle touches another from behind that's failure to control speed."
The Fort Worth T hails the driver as a hero for keeping his cool and pulling his lone disabled passenger out of the burning bus.
"I would call him a hero," said Johnson. "I would say our organization is very proud of his actions."
The T released the video taken from inside the bus to show that the driver was obeying traffic laws.
"The video shows that prior to the impact he was driving at a safe speed, maintaining proper trailing distance and there was an unfortunate accident from that point," Johnson said.
The video shows other cars involved in the accident passing the bus, but does not show the impact itself. The T said an electrical surge caused the recorder on the bus to reboot.
"For some reason, the traffic in front of him stopped abruptly," said Johnson. "You can't really see a lot of brake lights and then all of a sudden, of course, there's an impact."
