In case you haven’t heard, Jack got hit by a bus. That’s Jack, the bubble-headed spokesman for fast-food chain Jack in the Box, whose current campaign to sell more artery-clogging burgers and tacos involves mock news and web coverage of Jack’s bus accident injury.

Launched during Super Bowl XLIII’s telecast — among other ads wallowing in the mirth of misery — it’s a warped yet creative campaign, and it’s likely to make even more money for the chain’s 2,100 restaurants. But we’d like to mention, for sensitivity’s sake, its utterly bad timing.

Just two days before Jack’s bus accident broke on the Super Bowl, seven Chinese tourists crossing Arizona in a bus were killed — with 10 injured — when the tour bus transporting them overturned and crashed near Hoover Dam.

For these people, there will be no “Hang in there Jack” website making mean-spirited mirth out of a bus accident. For these people, there’s only the harsh truth that a bus accident can be devastating to real human beings. In a cavernous bus with no safety belts, severe injuries and even death can result, especially when a bus rolls over, as this one did.

Given the frequency of bus accidents across America — often with such a chartered tour bus, a school bus or a casino tour bus — there was scant chance Jack’s bus campaign wouldn’t run up against a real-world tragedy which couldn’t be laughed off. And apart from callous insensitivity, that makes you wonder why this gimmicky make-believe “accident” was picked for commercial punch and amusement.

It must be because folks tend to reference buses or trucks — the road’s largest vehicles — in   gallows humor about meeting their maker on a road or highway. “Yeah, and then probably a bus will hit me,” goes one refrain, while “Until I get hit by a truck, I’ll be fine” goes another. A mere motorcycle won’t do. For massive mirth, it must be a bus or a truck.

But bus accidents — and truck accidents — are no laughing matters. Rather, they are very painfully real.

So have fun, Jack, and make mounds of money with your macabre mirth about an alleged bus accident in which no one was hurt. Just know that it’s bad form to make light of a bus accident when so many claim real lives throughout the year. And if you don’t know that, then you don’t know jack.

If you or a loved one has been harmed in a bus accident, let a bus accident lawyer with Jim S. Adler & Associates fight for your legal rights with a bus accident lawsuit. Call toll-free today to 1-800-505-1414, or submit the free case review form on this page. Your bus accident was real, not a joke. Don’t let an insurance company or negligent bus line treat it as anything less.

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