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NY Parkway Accident
LAKEVIEW, N.Y. — A charter bus carrying teenagers returning from a spring break trip Sunday night struck a bridge overpass on Long Island, seriously injuring six passengers and mangling the entire length of the top of the bus.
The crash happened shortly after 9 p.m. Sunday on the Southern State Parkway in Lakeview, according to New York State Police.
One of the six injured passengers had very serious injuries, said State Police Maj. David Candelaria. Thirty-seven other passengers suffered minor injuries.
“Everybody was able to walk out except one, which we extricated,” Lakeview Fire Department Chief Patrick McNeill told Newsday. “There was glass everywhere. The roof of the bus is down to the top of the seat covers.”
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7 Replies
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That must have been some serious low clearance.
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And a seriously stupid driver!
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I’am just going from memory …BTW, some days better then others
In New York if a road is labeled “Parkway” truck and/or commercial traffic is not permitted travel ? And the reason is low clearance overpasses.
Thus this old joke…
“why do New Yorkers drive on a parkway and park on a drive way “?
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There are two lessons here………
The bus was a commercial vehicle and thus should have never been on that road in the first place so if the driver is still alive I hope he has learned from that.
The second lesson is to obey the bridge clearance (or weight limit) signs. He obviously never paid any attention to them so when he hit the bridge he had to have been going at highway speeds. Based on how far back the damage on the H3 was he was moving pretty fast. If he was only doing 60 in the 1/2 second it took to go the length of the coach under the bridge he likely never took his foot off the gas or took it out of cruise control.
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I’ve heard two different versions of the bridge height. One was 10 feet, the other was 8. A bad deal either way. Being from the general area, you know not to take these roads with a large or commercial vehicle, but in my opinion most are poorly marked to exclude them. NY State could do a much better job with their signage.
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Having been on one of the parkways with our first bus I agree the signage just says no commercial vehicles and makes no reference to heights or weights. I ended backing up to an exit because of a low clearance stone bridge on a parkway that was in the Lake Ontario area. The bridge clearance was clearly marked, both prior to the bridge and on the bridge so I had plenty of warning and did not have any issues other than trying to get back to an exit.
But the need for better signage PRIOR to the on-ramp to the parkway is right on and maybe now that someone has lost their life that will happen.
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RVRon, having lived there for seven years I can attest to the old stone masonry bridges have an arched opening. What I recall seeing is a clearance height being posted at both sides of the roadway over the edge lines (one yellow on the left and one white on the right) with another sign being posted at the midpoint of the arch (maximum clearance through the arch). That may be the reason you have heard two different clearance dimensions on reports. Of course one must always remember the reporters on scene are only parrots, saying what they are told without confirming what they were told.
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