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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reported in 2007 that there were 278 buses involved in fatal crashes and 6,593 buses were involved in injury crashes. 322 fatalities were reported in the United States in 2007 resulting from bus accidents. 15,888 injuries from bus accidents were reported in 2007.

During the early morning hours of July 22, 2010, a Greyhound bus traveling to Sacramento from Los Angeles crashed on a highway in California’s Central Valley, killing six and seriously injuring nine others, according to a recent Associated Press news report.

The bus, carrying 36 people, struck an SUV that had overturned in front of it, slammed into a concrete center divider and clipped another vehicle shortly after 2 a.m. just outside downtown Fresno, California Highway Patrol Officer Axel Reyes said. It went off the right shoulder of the highway down a 15-foot embankment, hit a eucalyptus tree and came to rest on a freeway off-ramp with its front end smashed and tree branches jutting into the vehicle.

Twisted pieces of metal, broken glass and torn clothing littered the ground around the bus wreckage.

Arlen Snider, who had been traveling from Phoenix to Sacramento to visit his mother, said he was asleep in the middle section of the bus when the crash occurred. He awoke to the smell of smoke and injured passengers all around him.

“I woke up on the floor of the bus and started helping people off the bus,” Snider, who escaped uninjured, said after arriving in Sacramento’s bus terminal Thursday morning.

The six dead included four women and two men. Nine people were taken to the hospital with moderate to critical injuries, Reyes said. The bus driver was among the dead.

“I had just woke up and I heard a boom once, and a boom again and the next thing I know we were down this embankment,” Linda Gee, a passenger on the bus, told KMPH-TV in Fresno.

The blue Chevy Trailblazer that had overturned in the fast lane also landed at the bottom of the embankment, its roof caved in and doors crushed.

Officials were investigating the cause of the initial SUV crash, including whether it was related to drunken driving, Reyes said.

The bus departed Los Angeles late Wednesday and stopped in Fresno before continuing on its route to Sacramento with 35 passengers on board, said Greyhound spokeswoman Bonnie Bastian. It was on its way to Madera for one of about eight scheduled stops when the crash occurred.

A relief bus was sent to take nine passengers who wanted to continue on to their destinations.

The two northbound lanes of Highway 99, a major route through the San Joaquin Valley, were closed for several hours after the crash.

On April 1, 2010, a Disney bus hit and killed a 10-year-old boy while he was riding a bicycle with a friend near Fort Wilderness on Walt Disney World property, the Florida Highway Patrol confirmed, according to a recent Orlando Sentinel news report.

Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger said the bus driver and witnesses are currently waiting to be interviewed by authorities. Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Kim Montes said 28 passengers were inside the Disney bus. None of the passengers was injured in the crash.

Troopers are conducting a traffic homicide investigation, Montes said. The boy and his family are Florida residents, but they are not from Orlando.

This is the second fatality involving Disney’s transportation network within the last year. Last summer, a 21-year-old monorail driver died when another train backed into his monorail during a botched track switch.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration ultimately fined Disney $35,200 for workplace-safety violations discovered during a review of that accident. The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to release the results of its own investigation into the crash later this year.

Today’s fatality comes during one of the theme park’s busiest weeks of the year. Many schools across the country are out for spring break vacation and, with the Easter holiday weekend approaching, Disney parks are a popular destination.

The Magic Kingdom, the biggest theme park in the world, has neared capacity at several points this the week.

Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort is a wooded campground near the Magic Kingdom theme park. The facility includes about 800 campsites and 400 cabins. It is the only camping and RV accommodation at Disney World.

The campground, like Disney’s hotels, is served by a fleet of company buses that transport guests to the resort’s theme parks, water parks and Downtown Disney shopping-and-dining district.

Today’s fatal accident is the third bus-related incident at Disney in six months. Last week, one bus rear-ended a second bus near Epcot, sending eight people to area hospitals. Seven injuries were minor and one was serious, officials said. The crash happened when one bus stopped to merge as World Drive narrowed from three to two lanes. The second bus did not stop in time and struck the stopped bus.

In July, two Walt Disney World buses crashed in front of the Contemporary Resort. The crash sent 12 people to four hospitals with minor injuries.

Accidents are often the result of somebody else’s negligence. A federal judge ordered a bus company involved in an Arizona crash that killed six people and injured more than a dozen others to cease interstate operations, according to a newly published Associated Press report.

On March 6, 2010, U.S. District Judge George King of the Central District of California in Los Angeles issued the order against Tierra Santa Inc. and its owner, Cayetano Martinez. Martinez earlier signed a consent decree prohibiting him or any affiliated company from hauling passengers without U.S. Department of Transportation authority, which is required to take passengers from one state to another.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration demanded Van Nuys, Calififornia based Tierra Santa stop operating on March 5, 2010, the day of the crash south of Phoenix. The judge’s order makes the shutdown enforceable by the court.

“They knew they were running illegally,” Duane DeBruyne, a Department of Transportation spokesman in Washington, D.C., said.

A federal complaint to be filed against the company today says the motor carrier administration previously shut down Martinez, who then attempted “to reincarnate himself as a new carrier” that unsuccessfully sought Department of Transportation operating authority, the department said in a news release Sunday.

“Martinez has shown a persistency and determination to continue operating under new entities and businesses,” the release quotes the complaint as saying.

The bus that crashed entered the United States from Mexico at El Paso, Texas. It was headed to Phoenix to change drivers when it hit a pickup truck, veered onto the left shoulder of the road and rolled on Interstate 10 on the Gila River Indian Reservation. The impact crushed the roof and knocked out the windows.

More than a dozen passengers remained hospitalized over the weekend.

Tierra Santa applied last April for operating authority to haul passengers across state lines. The Department of Transportation notified the company by registered mail that it could not conduct interstate transportation during the review, DeBruyne said.

The agency sought more information for the application but the company never responded. In December, the department sent another certified letter telling the company it had run out of time and was not authorized to take passengers across state lines, DeBruyne said.

The consent decree does not prevent civil penalties against Martinez for possible violations of motor carrier safety regulations, transportation officials said.