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Bus slides off the road while taking kids home

8 years 7 months 1 week ago Tuesday, August 18 2015 Aug 18, 2015 August 18, 2015 11:14 PM August 18, 2015 in News
Source: WBRZ
By: Russell Jones

BATON ROUGE - Drivers blame a U-turn not wide enough for large vehicles for forcing a school bus off the road while taking kids home in East Baton Rouge Parish Tuesday.

Witnesses said the bus went off into a ditch at Wisteria Lakes Drive and Sullivan Road. Social media posts showed children leaving the bus through emergency exits.

Drivers told News 2 they saw the bus try to make the turn and slide off the road.

A parent with a child on board the bus says following construction on Sullivan Road, a median has divided the four lanes of traffic, eliminating an entrance to the subdivision for cars driving south-bound. Often, cars and buses trying to get to Wisteria Lakes have to use the u-turn, which is what the bus driver was doing.

"You have to pass up our neighborhood and then you have to get over into the turning lane and make the u-turn to come back around and then pull into our neighborhood," said Lenzi Davis.

There are more than 100 homes in Wisteria Lakes subdivision. Davis says many drivers have to make that same u-turn every day.

A WBRZ crew watched cars make the turn Tuesday evening and found many cars drive onto the shoulder to complete the turn on Sullivan.

"It's not wide enough," said Davis. "You have to go on the shoulder every time you make that u-turn."

Davis says she's worried about her kids riding the bus and fears the same thing could happen again, if nothing is done to fix the turn.

A Green Light project spokesperson told WBRZ, engineers will check the design to see if extending the shoulder is a good idea. Another option would be to restrict the u-turn to passenger cars only. 

 

 

 

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