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Wirral pupils escape unharmed after school bus crash

10:37am Thursday 1st July 2010 in News By Stephanie Cureton

A GROUP of children from a Wirral school escaped unharmed when the roof of their school bus was ripped off.

Forty pupils from Portland Primary School in Birkenhead were travelling back from a day trip in Wrexham when the top of their double decker clipped a railway bridge. tearing the roof off.

The driver managed to swerve the bus to safety into a nearby side road.

The incident happened at around 2.55pm yesterday on the A541 in Cefn-Y-Bedd.

Headteacher, Mary Walker, said: "There was an incident this afternoon where one of our school buses returning from a trip to Wales got stuck under a railway bridge.

"Thankfully all the children are ok – although understandably a bit shaken.

"We always hope that incidents like this will never happen – but we always have to plan for them with a full risk assessment.

"In this case, this preparation helped to manage the situation. I am just thankful that everyone is ok and I am very proud of how the children and staff have conducted themselves."

Comments(4)

piggymalone says...
11:20am Thu 1 Jul 10

How on earth does this happen. All bridges under 16`6" should be adequately marked with the hight and the driver should know the hight of his vehicle. I would assume that this incident amounts to driver incompetence and its not surprising that the EU has introduced continuous driver training for PCV and HVG drivers when incidents like this keep happening. I would hope the operator as well as the driver are adequately punished and hopefully the school does not use that operator again. Would you want your children at risk, of course you wouldnt

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Wirralrob says...
3:40pm Fri 2 Jul 10

The bridge in question is 13'3 and on a fast road - same height as the one at Heswall Hills which will just fit some, but (clearly) not all double deckers. If the driver has been under it in a mildly smaller bus days earlier, it's easier to wrongly assume another decker would fit.

Network Rail claim these bridge-bashes cost them tens of thousands. They should instead be spending money beforehand on digging the road decks a foot deeper to stop this happening.

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piggymalone says...
8:35pm Fri 2 Jul 10

Sorry Wirralrob, cant agree....a professional PCV driver should know the hight of the bus he is driving even if he has driven numerous different buses during the day. In fact if I am not mistaken, I dont think its a legal requirement (but it should be) but it is recommended that the hight is displayed prominently in the cab

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King Tut says...
9:52pm Fri 2 Jul 10

The price of digging out the road surface would be sky high, think of all the sewer pipes and utillities etc underneath that in turn would have to be moved, its just not an option.
.
As for driving different height vehicles, no its the drivers responsibility to know the height of the vehicle especially comapred to the height of the bridge, if in doubt, don't go under, simple.

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