A woman was crossing the street on Redwood Road in Salt Lake City, Utah on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 when she was hit by a school bus. According to KSL news, Paulene Hansen and another woman were crossing the street at the crosswalk at 1700 South at around 7 a.m. when the bus hit the woman. The walk signal was lit and the bus started to make a left turn and hit the woman.
The woman was taken to the hospital with head and other injuries. Salt Lake City School District Transportation Supervisor Sean Tucker said the bus was not carrying any students. Tucker said the bus driver did not see the woman, who was wearing dark clothing.
Pedestrian Accident Statistics
2008 saw a decrease of 1.4% in number of pedestrian accidents compared to 2007 data. There were 69,000 pedestrian accidents in 2008 down from 70,000 the year previous. Also, the number of pedestrian fatalities dropped 6.8% in 2008.
I wish the woman a speedy recovery as she recovers from this Utah pedestrian accident.
Unfortunately, it seems in the past 8-10 months, there have been a rash of persons hit in a crosswalk while crossing the street. And a good number of these have been caused by so-called “professional” drivers, those that drive busses or trucks. These types of drivers are considered to be “commercial” drivers and are held to higher standards than your average motorist. The training is more intense and the rules that they must follow are more numerous. A big reason for this is the damage and injury that these commercial vehicles can inflict when the driver is negligent.
We’ve talked about this before, but Utah motorists, when confronted with a pedestrians crossing the street, are required to look for and yield to that pedestrian. I think an issue in this case will the amount of light available to see Paulene Hansen and the woman who ended up getting hit by the bus. However, in this case, there were two people that were in the crosswalk that the bus driver failed to yield to.
Since the bus in this case is owned by the Salt Lake City School District, then a notice called a “Notice of Claim” needs to be appropriately filed with the proper city and government officials no later than one year from the date of the collision. (Ideally, the notice should not be filed later than 6 months from the crash date.) I expect in this case that the Salt Lake City school district is going to maintain that it was the pedestrian at fault in this Utah bus accident because she was wearing darker clothing. I would recommend that the victim contact a Utah accident and injury lawyer experienced in these bus-pedestrian cases to counter these expected excuses by the school district and to investigate the case and advise her as to the remedies that are available to her.
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