Yesterday a Megabus bus caught fire after the bus blew a tire. All 80 passengers got off the bus safely losing only their stowed belongings. The bus apparently had blown tire. The bus driver maneuvered almost outside of the right lane without accident. Then the bus caught on fire after everyone got off of the bus. The accident happened just outside of South Carolina on I-85. The bus was a commercial vehicle owned by Megabus, in Atlanta, taking passengers to Charlotte, N.C.
There is at least as of yet no signs of negligence on the part of Megabus. As a commercial carrier, Megabus has a responsibility to inspect and maintain their buses. A spokesperson for Mega bus said the accident bus’s manufacturer was Van Hool, that it was built in 2012, that it had passed a full preventive maintenance check, and that it had been driven 2,500 miles since the last inspection. “Maintenance checks are performed by megabus.com approximately every 10 days and the maintenance facility recently passed a Department of Transportation routine audit,” she said.
Traffic remained backed up on I-85 northbound for miles. The principal reason for the delay was the size of the bus. The double-decker bus was simply too massive to be moved by local wrecking crews without cutting the bus into pieces.
Megabus, owned by the Stagecoach group, is an interstate commercial bus line. A woman was killed and 12 more were injured in a second Megabus accident last week. In that crash, also caused by a blown tire, the bus crashed into a bridge.
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