She thought a school bus with flashing lights was a TRACTOR?
Geez…the day it becomes possible for me to make that mistake is, well, let’s say a year at least after they’ve taken away my car keys.
It takes a severe and sustained level of distraction to get that effect. Either she was that distracted by something, or she felt she had to lie about what was really happening.
The lights are actually pretty specific to school buses:
-When the bus driver pushes the “I’m about to pick up/drop off passengers” button, the amber lights flash. They are mounted high, far above the headlights, and they don’t flash together like the hazards on your car or a tractor, they flash in a slow, alternating pattern - left, right, left right. Low-mounted hazard lights may also flash together (like your car), but the giveaway that screams “school bus” is those high-mounted lights, up at the roofline. Students aren’t supposed to cross the road to the bus at this point, though some of them might do so anyway. From what I’ve read, car drivers approaching a school bus with flashing amber lights are supposed to slow to 20 MPH (I suppose laws may differ from state to state on this point).
-When the bus driver opens the door, the amber lights stop and the high-mounted red lights in the same locations flash in the same alternating pattern - left, right, left, right.
Farm tractor hazard lights generally flash together, like this. You might find some aftermarket add-ons that flash in an alternating pattern, which might make it look like a bus in the dark - and until a driver confirms otherwise, it’s best to assume it is a bus and drive accordingly.
TL,DR: tractors sometimes look like school buses in the dark, but school buses never look like tractors in the dark.
Just curious - city dweller?
She was obviously distracted and at fault, but this happened in a rural area, and I wouldn’t be surprised if harvest was still going on. If you are driving your tractor on a highway to get from one field to another, you have lots of flashing yellow and red lights mounted high and low to cut down on people running into you.
Of course, assuming the stop arm also had flashing lights reduces the likelihood of this being accurate.
She killed 3 children and then went on to work??
Horseshit; they are separated by feet. Can you not see the light bar on top of a cop car? There’s a lot less vertical separation there.
Just curious - city dweller?
I’ve seen lots of tractors on the road; some don’t have any lights, while many others only have white/working lights. IMO, it’s quite rare to yellow/strobe/flashing lights on farm equipment.
Yeah, that surprised me too. If I accidentally killed anyone, it would be a very long time before I could function at anything close to a normal level.
Her crash-damaged truck stayed at the accident scene, so someone else drove her to work. According to the article at the OP’s link, the driver worked at a church; it may be that in the aftermath of the incident she called a coworker for emotional support, and went to the church for additional support when she was allowed to leave the scene. The article says she was arrested “at her job,” but ISTM that a church isn’t quite the same as most people’s workplaces; she may have been “at her job” in that she was physically located at the church, but I’d be very surprised if she was actually up to performing her job duties that day.
I’m curious did they do a blood alcohol test? Did they check her phone to see if she was on it?
Or did they not, possibly because she was a white, church lady with kids in the car?
I haven’t read anywhere that they did, but maybe so, it’s standard procedure at most accident scenes, is why I ask.
The blood test is literally mentioned in the first article linked in the OP:
I can think of many times when my brain didn’t kick for a couple of seconds and then at that speed? You might be thinking of something else. You might be looking at something your passing. It happens.
Also sometimes people panic and just freeze. I mean unless your brain is in the right place and your thinking “what will I do if I have to stop suddenly” and your body and reflexes are ready for it, it’s quite possible to do something stupid.
And yes, sometimes your brain might first think “tractor” or something like that.
And like someone said above - their is no “plan B”.
Her brain thought “tractor” for a good 10 seconds before impact.
Not entirely impossible when you might also be distracted by something a pretty sunrise, something alongside the road, something on the radio, talking to another person, drinking your coffee, lost in your thoughts, etc…
My point is the bus stop totally depended on drivers making those quick decisions. Maybe 99.99% of the time they do. But others?
If they’re sitting next to each other in the light of day, absolutely. If you’re behind the bus, absolutely.
But at night the visual cues of a bus are obscured if the headlights blind the oncoming driver. The brain fills in the details of what it thinks it sees. If the light pattern matches farm equipment then that’s what you perceive it to be.
This is made worse because it’s difficult to judge the approach of a vehicle at night. The bus driver initially waved the kids across the road before realizing how close the vehicle was.
that would be almost 3 football fields away. If you’re focused on objects that far away then you’re not paying attention to what’s in front of you. We have an accident where both drivers misjudged what they thought they saw.