Investigators focus on bus in interstate crash that killed 5
Investigators looking into a dead-of-night bus crash over the weekend on the Pennsylvania Turnpike have identified the five people killed, but it may take much longer before they will able to say what caused the pileup that also left dozens injured.
The National Transportation Safety Board plans to discuss the investigation at a news conference scheduled for later Monday.
Their focus will almost certainly include a close look at the driver, Shuang Qing Feng, 58, who was thrown from the bus and died at the scene early Sunday, on Interstate 76 in a mountainous and rural area about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Pittsburgh.
The great majority of all vehicle crashes involve some sort of driver behavior, said Christopher Turner, director of crash and data programs for the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance.
The loaded bus, which state police said was operated by Z&D Tour Inc. of Rockaway, New Jersey, went out of control on a downhill slope, striking the center barrier twice and setting off a chain reaction in which the bus was struck by two trucks, state police said. Two occupants of one of the trucks, UPS employees from central Pennsylvania, also were killed.
“This is not a typical incident — buses overturning is not a common occurrence," Turner said. “But obviously the risk is tremendous.”
The bus was traveling from the New York area to Cincinnati when the wreck happened around 3:30 a.m. Sunday.
Several messages seeking comment from the company were not returned, but Z&D owner Chen Dan Yu told The New York Times the bus had left New York's Chinatown for a regular route to Ohio.
Chen told the paper that weather was to blame. “It suddenly started to snow,” he said.
Federal records indicate no incidents in the past two years that resulted in a...