When an outbreak of salmonella food poisoning struck thousands of Americans last fall, federal investigators spent months seeking the proverbial “smoking gun.” In short, they spent months trying to pinpoint the origin and responsibility of an onslaught which sickened and even killed.

First they targeted tomatoes, and eventually jalapeno peppers, then Serrano peppers. Finally the “smoking gun” turned out to be a Mexican farm from which the corrupted Serrano peppers entered the food supply.

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While buses in general can be as risky as trying to draw on an inside straight, casino tour buses can be an even worse bet.

In California Sunday, a casino tour bus taking passengers from Sacramento to a gambling den flipped over and rolled into a ditch, killing eight people and critically injuring at least 30 others. As this and other bus accidents have shown, buses can be extremely dangerous when they turn over, which they often do.

The California Highway Patrol said the bus driver was perhaps on medication, and CHP has charged that driver with driving under the influence. The bus also lacked a valid license plate, having expired Texas plates. Built in the 1980s, the bus also lacked seatbelts, but that’s a common failing on buses.

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In a move that came too late for too many bus accident victims, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has halted approval of any new bus carriers until the feds get a fix on a problem that’s claimed 20 lives in two crashes in just the past week.

The government was responding to a problem created by a loophole in regulations which allowed bus lines with poor safety records to keep operating after supposedly being shut down. This was the case in the North Texas bus accident Aug. 8 in which 17 Houstonians were killed, after chartering a bus line which had been shut down for being unsafe but was simply operating under a new name.

The FMCSA “is concerned about these rogue operators, the chameleon carriers, who get put out of business and then come right back under a new name,” said the agency’s Kristin Schrader in Washington. (more…)

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Do you feel lucky? Well, do you?

If so, you might want to try your luck in multiple ways. One would be planning a trip to a casino resort in order to gamble. Another would be to take such a trip via a chartered casino tour bus.

Such buses are operated in order to ferry large groups of people across a significant distance to a casino, where they are expected to gamble. Often the passengers pay very little, since the casino figures it will make even more money via the passengers’ gambling losses.

This strategy proved tragically unlucky for a group of South Carolina people who recently visited Harrah’s Tunica casino in northwest Mississippi. For their trip back home on Sunday, 43 people rode a casino bus from the casino toward an airport. Along the way, the bus flipped over onto a median, killing three people and injuring several others. (more…)

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Again, a fatal bus crash has taken innocent lives, in this case three tourists aboard a casino bus in Mississippi. No other vehicles were involved when the bus, taking 43 visitors to an airport, flipped over in a median. Twenty-seven people were injured and taken to a hospital, where one was in critical condition.

The Associated Press reports that the bus’s roof partially caved in during the rollover accident Sunday, and its windows were knocked out.

The passengers had been guests of Harrah’s Tunica casino in northwest Mississippi as part of a promotional trip. Most were returning to their homes in South Carolina. Hararah’s Entertainment, owner of the bus, set up a telephone hotline to provide relatives of victims with information on the fatal bus crash. (more…)

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What will it take to wake up and shake up government authorities, charter bus lines and the public about the potential for catastrophic dangers in bus accidents?

Early Friday morning, another chartered bus bound north from Houston had a horrific bus accident in the Dallas area, killing 14. This bus accident wasn’t many miles from the spot where another chartered bus from Houston caught fire and exploded in 2005, killing 24 nursing home residents who were fleeing Hurricane Rita. (more…)

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Any traffic fatality is a tragedy, but we can take cold comfort in the fact that many such tragedies at least involve people with a purpose. We need our cars and trucks for useful functions, and that’s what many people are pursuing when they’re killed or injured while driving or riding in them. They are trying to get from point A to point B in order to reach their job, buy groceries, pick up their kids or get home in time for dinner.

But many vehicular accidents involve no purpose at all other than sheer – or mere — recreation. These accidents may range from the wildly reckless motorcyclists who terrorize Houston’s freeways by zipping between cars at speeds approaching 100 miles per hour to the thousands of people – including too many children – who take joy rides of their own on a far different vehicle: an all-terrain vehicle or ATV. (more…)

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