The National Transportation Safety Board said for the very first time that the bus had been exceeding the velocity limit on Interstate 95 just 45 seconds in advance of it veered off the highway, according to a preliminary report by the board about the March twelve crash.
The State Police have also been studying the crash and interviewing witnesses to support the Bronx district lawyer ascertain whether or not to file criminal fees in opposition to the driver of the bus, who was returning to New York from a trip to a casino in eastern Connecticut.
The driver, Ophadell Williams, 40, of Brooklyn, told investigators that a tractor-trailer passing him had swerved, forcing him to veer off the road. A truck driver contacted the police later that day to say he had noticed the crash. But the report claimed that investigators found no evidence of any get in touch with among his truck and the bus and that on March 22 the truck driver was cleared of any obligation.
The security board’s report did not attain a conclusion about the result in of the crash, which it is still investigating. In the 90 seconds just before the crash, the bus traveled at diverse speeds, the report mentioned, but was going 78 miles per hour within just 45 seconds of the crash. The bus’s speed diminished just before the crash, the report explained.
The posted velocity limit on that stretch of I-95, just south of the Westchester County line, is 55 m.p.h. The report indicated that the engine of the bus was constrained to a prime speed of 78 m.p.h.
The only public remarks by Mr. Williams about the crash have been made as a result of his lawyers. State officials revoked his driving privileges immediately after reviews became public of Mr. Williams’s criminal record, which involves serving time in prison for convictions of manslaughter and larceny.
Howard Lee, a lawyer representing Mr. Williams, said Friday that he had not still read the safety board’s preliminary report and so had little to say about it. But as he has in the past, Mr. Lee questioned no matter if speeding brought about the crash. He also expressed skepticism about the choice to distinct the truck driver, who he explained could have played a function in the crash even if the two automobiles did not collide.
Lawyers representing some surviving passengers and family members of victims of the crash have claimed that Mr. Williams fell asleep at the wheel before the crash, which occurred at 5:45 a.m. The bus, operated by World Wide Journey of Higher New York, a business based mostly in Brooklyn, was returning to Chinatown in Manhattan from an overnight trip to the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Conn.
Mr. Williams had driven the bus to the casino the prior evening. Even though the passengers have been inside of the casino, he bought a meal, then returned to the bus, ate and slept for a few hrs, his attorneys have explained.
The report stated that none of the 33 passengers, other than Mr. Williams, could have been putting on a seat belt since his was the only a single on the 12-yr-older bus. It also claimed that there was a video clip camera in the front of the bus facing forward but that “the program was not created to record video clip information and was not running at the time of the accident.”
The safety board claimed that the fateful run was 1 of 14 every day round-journeys in between New York Metropolis and the casino. It mentioned Planet Wide Journey obtained a “satisfactory” rating in its newest assessment for compliance with federal bus-security rules.
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