Sleeping driver seriously injured after hitting Marion school bus head-on
A truck driver was seriously injured and hospitalized Wednesday morning after falling asleep at the wheel and hitting a school bus in Marion County head-on.
Seven USD 397 students were on board the bus at the time of the collision, a district Facebook post read.
It was around 7:15 a.m. when the 75-year-old driver of a Dodge Ram truck fell asleep while westbound on Lost Spring’s rural 340th Street just east of Sunflower Road, a Kansas Highway Patrol crash report detailed. The driver of the eastbound school bus stopped the bus and blew the horn, the district’s statement read, before the truck hit the bus head-on.
“Based on what we know so far, the driver of a pickup truck veered into the lane of the bus,” Superintendent Dan Ackland wrote. “Our bus driver came to a complete stop and honked a couple times, but the driver of the truck hit the front of the stopped bus at approximately 20mph.“
The 79-year-old school bus driver wasn’t hurt, the KHP report read, but the truck driver had critical injuries and was taken to a hospital.
The students were also medically evaluated, and their parents were notified of the incident before the children were picked up and taken to school on a different bus.
The incident remains under investigation, Ackland said, and USD 397 staff will “process the incident to review and evaluate our response.”
“We are grateful and appreciative of the many volunteer fire and EMS who responded to the incident and assisted,” Ackland wrote. “We are grateful to the staff who assisted in many ways during the incident. We also are grateful for the quick thinking of our bus driver who helped minimize the impact of the accident.”
