A Greyhound bus crashed July 10, 2007, injuring or shaking up the 49 people on board.  A passenger with known mental issues grabbed the steering wheel from the bus driver. See: www.wmcstations.com/Global/story.asp

This crash is reprehensible because it was not only easily preventable, but because Greyhound has known for years this type incident occurs without protective barriers for the driver. In fact our firm sued Greyhound over a similar crash in 2001 which resulted in our clients death. The Greyhound bus driver in our case stated that drivers had been asking Greyhound for years for protection from passenger assaults and interference with the the drivers. Greyhound records show that, before the crash my firm handled in 2001, there were 42 similar incidents of passengers interfering with the driving of a bus, with 5 of the incidents resulting in an accident. The experts in our case agreed that an inexpensive protective barrier was called for, readily available, and should be installed on passenger buses.

After significant discovery, effort, and work we were able to prove Greyhound’s poor practices and decisions endangered our client and the motoring public. Our clients eventually made a decision to settle their case prior to trial and Greyhound stated they were going to install protective barriers on their buses. Clearly they did not. A companion case to ours, with a paralyzed passenger,  went to trial and received a multimillion dollar verdict which was upheld on appeal.  See: Surles ex rel. Johnson v. Greyhound Lines, Inc., 474 F.3d 288 C.A.6 (Tenn. 2007)

Greyhound should be punished for allowing this type of accident to happen again. They clearly don’t understand the need to protect their passengers!