The Deadliest Bus Accidents Ever

Buses are possibly the most efficient means to transport large numbers of people over roadways but also one of the deadliest. This is because of their size. For example, a large-ish New York City bus that is articulated (these are the ones that are divided into segments with a bendable middle), can reach about 60 feet in length and carry up to 115 people. The Democratic Republic of Congo has articulated DAF Super CityTrain buses which reach 106 feet in length and can carry 350 passengers. 

Because of the volume of humanity that can cram onto a bus, they are prone to high fatality rates when they get into accidents. Yet, some of the deadliest bus accidents only make a blip in English language sources. For example, the text "Introduction to International Disaster Management" cites that in Egypt in 1973, 127 people died when a bus fell into an irrigation canal. Despite the high fatality rate, it only had a brief mention in The New York Times, which cited 70 fatalities (but admitted the actual number of dead was unknown).

However, according to the National Safety Council, buses are by far safer to journey in than passenger cars. It's just that when things do go bad on a bus, they do so in a very dramatic way. Here are some of the deadliest bus accidents from around the world.

On the evening of December 4, 1951, a company of 52 Royal Marines Cadets was walking from their barracks in Gillingham, U.K. The boys, aged between 9 and 13, were on their way to see a boxing match at the Chatham Docks. At the same time, a double-decker bus driven by John Sampson negotiated its way on the poorly lit streets.

The bus neared the cadets as they walked down a sidewalk of a narrow road with a high wall upon one side. Sampson did not see the cadets, who were dressed in dark blue uniforms, until it was too late. His bus rammed into the back of the line of boys mowing them down. Seventeen died at the scene and another seven within a few hours. 

At the inquiry which followed Sampson testified he did not see the cadets at all but thought that he had hit stones when he collided with the boys. It seems that he only stopped the bus when he started to hear screams from the roadway. He was found guilty of accidental death, fined £20, and barred from driving for three years. The parents of the victims were given £10,000 from the bus company and the government moved to make the streets better lit. Since the tragedy, the U.K.'s service branches instituted a rule that columns marching on dark roads at night would have a red light at the rear of the column.

The Prestonburg Bus Disaster was particularly tragic because the victims were mainly schoolchildren. February 28, 1958 saw an overcast morning with inclement conditions after a storm that brought on a thaw. A school bus loaded with 48 children ranging from elementary to high school students was traveling along U.S. 23. Meanwhile, Donald Horn was driving a wrecker truck and pulled over to investigate a vehicle that was in a ditch. The bus driver apparently did not see Horn's truck in time. It struck the wrecker and then slid down an embankment into the Levisa fork of the Big Sandy River.

Despite the river's waters being high due to the storm, 22 students managed to get out of the bus and to safety by breaking windows and fighting their way out through the back door followed by swimming to the riverbanks. However, the bus became quickly submerged and 26 others were drowned along with the bus driver. The Kentucky National Guard sent 500 personnel to assist with the rescue efforts. One officer recalled (via the state's report on the 50th anniversary), "I remember the bus was loaded with mud and you could see hands and legs sticking out of the mud." The bus was only pulled from the river 55 hours later after it was located by Navy divers 250 feet from where it first plunged into the river.

[Image by Kentucky National Guard Public Affairs Office via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY 2.0]

The deadliest bus accident in the United States occurred on September 17, 1963, when an ill-fated bus met a train in Chualar, California. At the time, due to labor shortages Mexican agricultural laborers, called "braceros" were recruited and sent to the Salinas Valley and other locations to work on farms on makeshift buses that have been described as converted flatbed trucks with metal walls. Generally, these laborers were discriminated against and maltreated.

When one of the makeshift buses was transporting workers across some train tracks, it was struck by a Southern Pacific freight train. According to the government's investigation, the crossing, which was on a private road, had no markers. In addition, the bus driver stated he did not hear or see anything unusual. Of those on the bus, 32 were killed and 25 injured. The driver, who survived the crash, was roundly criticized for negligence in the outrage which followed. 

Even though the scope of the tragedy made it the deadliest road accident in U.S. history, no memorial was dedicated to the victims until decades later, in 2013, when a portion of Highway 101 was named the Bracero Memorial Highway.

[Image by Elnogalense via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]

Buses are an excellent means of travel for tourists, especially when they visit foreign countries. That is, until disaster strikes. Such was the case on November 23, 2021, when a busload of tourists were traveling back in a convoy to North Macedonia after visiting Istanbul, Turkey.

At about 2:00 a.m. near the town of Bosnek, just outside of Sophia, Bulgaria, one of the buses crashed into a highway divider. At some point, either before or after, the coach was set ablaze. A few managed to escape through a broken window. It was a traumatic and tortuous experience for the 45 victims who perished. Researchers determined that on the whole, they died from suffocation from the smoke, due to being trapped inside the wreck. It was unclear what the cause of the accident was though it is believed that "human error" may have been the culprit. 

Sadly, accidents are all too common in Bulgaria. Euronews reporting on European Commission data says the country had the second-highest road fatality rate in the European Union in 2019.

The landlocked country of Burkina Faso was home to one of the grisliest bus accidents in recent memory. In the early hours of the morning on November 15, 2008, near the town of Boromo, a truck hauling sugar collided with a bus carrying dozens of workers who were bound for the nearby Ivory Coast. In the chaotic collision, the two vehicles erupted into flames. A grim scene followed.

Many victims were caught in the wreckage while others were ejected onto the roadside. In total, there were 96 victims of which 66 were fatalities. A court prosecutor who commented on how "gruesome" the scene was to the AFP news agency (via The Nation) added, "There are charred bodies which are still being removed. It's really horrible." It took some time to identify all the remains. 

Unfortunately, roadway accidents tend to be a common occurrence in this West African country as the rainy season comes to an end and roads become eroded and washed out.

Oncoming fuel tankers and overloaded buses do not mix. Such was the case in Zahedan, Iran in June 2004 when a gasoline tanker collided with a bus near the Pakistani border. Some 114 people were injured and 90 people died horribly in the ensuing fire. According to The Independent, the governor of Zahedan, Haidar Ali Nourai stated, "The disaster is so grave we cannot identify faces and cannot differentiate between corpses."

Apparently, what had happened was that the bus was stopped at a police checkpoint whose function was to inspect vehicles since that roadway was one of the main conduits of illegal drugs into the West. One local politician told the ISNA news agency (via the Times of Malta) that this particular checkpoint used "stone-age methods," which often created traffic jams. The checkpoint also was located on a rather sharp bend in the road. The tanker must have taken the turn too fast and then plowed right into the bus which caused an enormous explosion, and one of the deadliest bus accidents on record.

On August 18, 1968, rains from a typhoon had swollen the Hida River in Japan's Gifu prefecture into a muddy mass. Water levels reached up to 30 feet making for dangerous conditions. Meanwhile, a 15-bus caravan filled with sightseers was making its way along the road near the river. 

At about 1:20 a.m. the caravan was about to return to Nagoya after visiting Mount Norkura when an adjacent hillside gave way. In the landslide that followed, two of the buses were carried off into the swiftly flowing river. One of the drivers and two passengers managed to swim to the shore but for the rest, it was a death trap. According to The New York Times, the surviving driver stated, "My bus went down into the muddy stream, but somehow I got away through the windshield."

Rescue crews, comprised of about 1,000 workers, immediately located 28 bodies many miles downstream from the site. Yet the conditions were so adverse the large buses could not initially be located. The final death count was a shocking 102 fatalities.