SAN ANTONIO, Fla. (WFLA) – Five students on a Pasco County school bus are okay after the bus was T-boned by a tractor trailer.
The crash happened around 5 p.m. Tuesday on State Road 52 at the Interstate-75 overpass.
The driver is okay, though the driver’s assistant was treated after the crash and released.
Video shows the driver of the semi, identified by the Florida Highway Patrol as David Dunlop II of Stetson, Maine, go around another vehicle stopped at a light and then turn left right into the middle of the school bus.
“Oh my God,” said Angie Genter when we showed her the video just yards away from the accident site. As she gasped, she repeated, “Oh my God. Scary. Very scary. That’s frightening, especially being a mom.”
Jennifer Carpenter of Brooksville drove by just moments after the crash and said when she saw the school bus on the side of the road, she thoughts kids were hurt.
“I don’t know why you’d even attempt with a trailer to pull in front of a car like that,” Carpenter told News Channel 8. “This is a terrible, terrible area. Come through here every day and it’s like that every single day.”
Other drivers say the semi’s driver needs to face serious consequences.
“He should definitely loose his license, especially his CDL license,” said Ed Gener. “He should know better. What is that important to put somebody else’s life at risk that you’re hauling in a truck? I mean, I know it’s your job but stuff like that.”
Stuff like that could have been deadly, former bus driver Bruce Wheeler said, if only some drivers had a little more patient.
“Most of these accidents are just either people impatient or not paying attention,” Wheeler told WFLA News Channel 8. “Obviously, he was just being impatient.”
The driver’s father, David Dunlop, told WFLA News Channel 8 over the phone that it was just an accident and that the car in front of his son sat through several light cycles and never moved. He told WFLA News Channel 8 that’s the reason his son chose to drive around the car in front of him.
The Pasco County School District is also expected to release video from inside the school bus.
