GUILTY WA - Seattle bus, duck boat crash leaves four dead, dozens injured, Sept 2015

Four international students from North Seattle College were killed in the crash, the school said in a statement Thursday night. Their names were not released pending family notification.

"Today, the North Seattle College community learned devastating news that four of our students were tragically killed in a vehicle accident on the Aurora Bridge," the statement said. "Additionally, several students remain in critical condition, and other students and a North employee sustained serious injuries."

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zwiebel said:

A four-vehicle crash in Seattle involving a bus full of students and a tourist duck boat has left four students dead, 15 people critical and 33 others with less serious injuries.

The crash occurred Thursday morning on the Aurora Bridge and triggered a huge emergency response; at one stage an emergency vehicle overheated and broke down, forcing responders to wheel a victim the rest of the way to the hospital.



An investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing.

http://abc13.com/news/4-college-students-dead-in-seattle-duck-boat-crash/1000200/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...d-Duck-Tour-vehicle-collides-bus-Seattle.html

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KaaBoom said:

Thats crazy. Those are military beach landing vehicles. They have no business operating them on crowded city streets, that way. It's just an accident waiting to happen, and apparently this is not the first time it has happened. I hope they shut that operation down.

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KaaBoom said:

Thats crazy. Those are military beach landing vehicles. They have no business operating them on crowded city streets, that way. It's just an accident waiting to happen, and apparently this is not the first time it has happened. I hope they shut that operation down.

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sonjay said:

As far as I'm aware, every single type of vehicle being operated on public roadways has been involved in crashes.

Do you know what, specifically, is so dangerous about these Duck Boats that they should be singled out to be shut down? I'm unclear on what makes them so much worse than any other vehicle on the road.

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KaaBoom said:

Well, take a look at what happened to the motorcyclists in this video. These vehicles were designed to land troops on beaches in World War 2, not to be giving tourists rides through a major congested Downtown area.

[video=youtube;1xwQmL3n8Hg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xwQmL3n8Hg[/video]

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sonjay said:

Well, I could post videos, pictures and news reports all day long of horrendous vehicle crashes not involving Duck Boats. Plain old sedans, SUVs, compact cars, convertibles, luxury cars, pickup trucks, tractor trailers.... Bloody carnage all day long.... about 30,000 people killed every year -- that's about 80 people per day. And many thousands more injured and requiring medical treatment or hospitalization.

Wikipedia tells me there have been very few fatal incidents and very few non-fatal incidents involving Duck boats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_tour#Fatal_incidents

It seems that they have, overall, a pretty good safety record, considering that these Duck Boat rides are taking place all over the world.

As far as I can tell, this is the first fatal crash on land involving a Duck Boat and another vehicle. There was a fatality involving a pedestrian who crossed the street against the light while reading her tablet. The Duck Boat driver wasn't charged in that incident. The most famous Duck Boat incident is probably the one in Philadelphia a few years ago. The captain of the Duck Boat was found partially at fault, but the tug boat pilot who ran it down was criminally charged and convicted. And that incident had nothing to do with the safety of Duck Boats on city streets.

It's being reported now that in the Seattle crash, the left front tire of the Duck Boat came off. That sort of thing can and does happen to all types of vehicles, and has nothing to do with the safety of Duck Boats on city streets.

Honestly, I just don't see how they're so horrendously unsafe that they should be banned. If Duck Boats must be banned because they're so dangerous, then we really should ban all vehicles. If I were going to start banning vehicles from the roads because of safety concerns, I'd probably start with motorcycles, followed by either convertibles or compact cars. Then probably either the huge SUVs, or the tractor trailors. Duck Boats would likely be pretty far down on the list of vehicles to ban because of inherent safety issues.

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Ride The Ducks has been involved in two other collisions in recent years, in December 2010 and June 2011, when different Duck drivers rear-ended passenger vehicles at Third Avenue and Pike Street and at Aurora Avenue North and Denny Way. No one was injured, but both Duck drivers told officers they didn’t see the cars because of the height of their own vehicles, according to the collision reports.

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Trino said:

If the tire came off, the company that operates the boat is legally responsible, and the lawsuits will probably put the company out of business. A ban may not be necessary.

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KaaBoom said:

From the Wikipedia article.

Again these vehicles are being used for a purpose other then what they were designed for. They should be treated the same way any other vehicle on the road is treated that doesn't have a clear line of sight with the traffic. They should be required to run with a pilot car in front, one behind, and they should have and additional tour guide on board to provide the entertainment, so the driver can concentrate on communicating with the pilot cars, so they don't run into anyone.

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sonjay said:

So, two rear-end collisions 4 years ago and 5 years ago means that these things are so dangerous that they need a front and rear escort?

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KaaBoom said:

From the Wikipedia article.



Again these vehicles are being used for a purpose other then what they were designed for. They should be treated the same way any other vehicle on the road is treated that doesn't have a clear line of sight with the traffic. They should be required to run with a pilot car in front, one behind, and they should have and additional tour guide on board to provide the entertainment, so the driver can concentrate on communicating with the pilot cars, so they don't run into anyone.

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Trino said:

http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3919786.shtml?cat=12678

Duck boats suspended:
The decision came a day after federal investigators announced that the duck boat involved in the crash did not have an axle repair that was recommended two years ago for such vehicles. Expect millions in payouts.

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sonjay said:

Do you have any idea how many car accidents & truck accidents and plane accidents and train accidents and boat accidents happen because someone failed to adhere to some aspect of a maintenance schedule?

I'm not saying it's okay for the Duck Boat company to not keep their Duck Boats maintained properly. (Although I'm sure someone will come along and respond as if that's what I'm doing.)

I am saying that it happens all the time, and people die, and no one calls for the company to be put out of business.

Also, an accident that happened due to inadequate maintenance is unrelated to the safety of the Duck Boats on city streets. Apparently, this accident had nothing to do with the overall safety of Duck Boats.

For heaven's sake, I really need to hear you folks calling for cars & trucks to be banned. If four fatalities justifies banning something, then ALL cars, trucks, tractor trailers, boats, planes, trains, bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, and every other type of mechanized transportation needs to be banned.

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KaaBoom said:

You do understand that you are comparing a couple of hundred 70 year old military surplus vehicles that were never designed to be used as tour vehicles, vs millions of modern vehicles with safety equipment that didn't even exist during World War 2, right? It's kind of an apples and oranges comparison. Of course the millions of modern vehicles, are going to have more accidents, then a couple of hundred WW2 surplus vehicles. But that has only to do with sheer numbers. It doesn't prove that they are as safe as modern vehicles.

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KaaBoom said:

You do understand that you are comparing a couple of hundred 70 year old military surplus vehicles that were never designed to be used as tour vehicles, vs millions of modern vehicles with safety equipment that didn't even exist during World War 2, right? It's kind of an apples and oranges comparison. Of course the millions of modern vehicles, are going to have more accidents, then a couple of hundred WW2 surplus vehicles. But that has only to do with sheer numbers. It doesn't prove that they are as safe as modern vehicles.

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LaborDayRN said:

I agree. There are 2 million tractor trailers in the U.S. http://www.truckinfo.net/trucking/stats.htm
There are a couple hundred duck boats (If that, I can't find an exact number). You really can't compare the number of accidents of one to the other.

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KaaBoom said:

You do understand that you are comparing a couple of hundred 70 year old military surplus vehicles that were never designed to be used as tour vehicles, vs millions of modern vehicles with safety equipment that didn't even exist during World War 2, right? It's kind of an apples and oranges comparison. Of course the millions of modern vehicles, are going to have more accidents, then a couple of hundred WW2 surplus vehicles. But that has only to do with sheer numbers. It doesn't prove that they are as safe as modern vehicles.

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Montjoy said:

It's not just the number of vehicles that makes the comparison useless -- it's also the relative number of miles, hours of usage, etc.

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