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World Wide Tours Major Accident
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GBL Rebel
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Location: Long Island, N.Y.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 9:45 am    Post subject: World Wide Tours Major Accident Reply with quote

This happened about 5:30a.m. on the New England Thruway. 13 passengers have been lost in this terrible accident.

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/135439/thirteen-dead-in-bronx-tour-bus-crash

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110312/ap_on_re_us/us_tour_bus_accident
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RailBus63
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 10:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The accident was apparently caused by a tractor-trailer truck which clipped the bus and then continued on. Hopefully the authorities have some camera footage somewhere along the highway which will help identify the truck and bring the driver to justice if warranted.
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GBL Rebel
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 10:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My prayers go out to all the passengers and their families involved in this horrible accident.
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Mr. Linsky
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Joined: 16 Apr 2007
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Location: BRENTWOOD, CA. - WOODMERE, N.Y.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 2:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

According to the picture below (thanks to GBL's lead), this has to be the freakiest of freak accidents what with a sign stanchion ripping its way from the front to the rear of the bus - it's a miracle that more passengers weren't killed!

I'm wondering if this says something about the way buses are built today?

My prayers also extend to those involved here.

Mr. 'L'

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Hart Bus



Age: 73
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 4:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sadly as of 1432 hours on Saturday, WABC is reporting that the Tragic Number of victims has climbed to 14. There are still 7 in critical condition in
the hospital with the remaining 11 passengers less seriously injured and will survive.


My prayers are with all of them.
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Hart Bus



Age: 73
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 6:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A further follow-up to my previous posts. The investigators are now looking at driver fatigue as well as speed as contributing factors. How can the bus skid for over a football field, slam into a post and have that much damage if it was going at low speed?

Two UPS drivers who were S/B on I-95 said that a World Wide Tours bus went past them so fast that their trucks shook. They were sure of the fleet number, but its a good bet that #259 is the guilty party.

The tractor driver has yet to be located for questioning.

Hopefully the tragic number will stay at 14.
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Hart Bus



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PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

As rumored on several bus boards and confirmed by today's New York Post, several of the victims were beheaded and there were body parts strewn all over. A horror !!!!!!!
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Mr. Linsky
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 1:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It stands to reason!

The stanchion swept through the aisle at 'head' level and with the speed of a dropping guillotine - a most horrific way to go but swift with the least suffering.

Now we have to look at two aspects of this accident;

Could the pillars that support the roofs of modern buses be made stronger to minimize the damage that was caused in this 'weird' scenario?

And, should we talk about 'break away' stanchions for highway signs.

I'm sure that the National Highway Traffic Safety people will assess these values.

Mr. 'L'
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shortlineMCI



Age: 54
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 9:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yea, I'd say fatigue definately was a contributing factor to this. I never quite understood the reason to take a bus overnight to a casino and come home early in the morning. Makes no sense whatsoever. You will see that the NHTSA will have to tighten the rules for the small companies and bring them up to standards as they do, say Coach USA, the company that I work for.

As many of you may, or may not know, when a bus drops off his pax at a casino, they want their 6 hours there. It matters not which six hours it may be. This is not a 9 - 5 deal here.

It is up to the driver to plan accordingly. Any row of seats, in the MCI for example the first front seats make for a quite comfortble sleeping arragements. I know I've slept for hours like that. The pax complained that this driver was swerving prior to the accident. The driver is has just been brought to light has a criminal record dating back to 2003. I think this is irrelevent though.

My thoughts a prayers goes out to every single person on that coach, including the driver and his family. God Speed.
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shortlineMCI



Age: 54
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 9:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mr. Linsky wrote:
It stands to reason!

The stanchion swept through the aisle at 'head' level and with the speed of a dropping guillotine - a most horrific way to go but swift with the least suffering.

Now we have to look at two aspects of this accident;

Could the pillars that support the roofs of modern buses be made stronger to minimize the damage that was caused in this 'weird' scenario?

And, should we talk about 'break away' stanchions for highway signs.

I'm sure that the National Highway Traffic Safety people will assess these values.

Mr. 'L'


Coach buses have a very low center of gravity. The bottom half of a coach bus is very, very heavy while the top portion is very light. I would love, Mr. linsky to see them strengthen to top of a bus, but I don't know of any material that can withstand that kind of pressure.


I shouldn't even be mentioning this but you can go around turns very, very fast in a coach bus and they will take those turns with ease. The only reason we have to slow down is because the car in front of us is taking the turn way to slow. if there is a second lane on a highway for example, we can switch lanes and blow them away.

The slow speeds you see us go around turns are for passenger comfort. In other words you have to do something to get a coach bus to flip like that. It is very difficult to flip a bus because of my reasons metioned above.
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Hart Bus



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PostPosted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 10:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

shortlineMCI wrote:
Yea, I'd say fatigue definately was a contributing factor to this. I never quite understood the reason to take a bus overnight to a casino and come home early in the morning. Makes no sense whatsoever.

My thoughts a prayers goes out to every single person on that coach, including the driver and his family. God Speed.


I echo your sentiments and prayers. Thankfully I have never been in the grip of a compulsion like gambling. The "attraction" to the night owl trips is that you can get off work, hop the bus, get your fix at the casino, sleep on the bus and be back at work the next morning.

I strongly believe that a human is not a nocturnal animal and staying up through the night is not natural and can affect your body clock. Perhaps that is why I have a tough enough time staying up past midnight on New Years Eve to watch the Honeymooners marathon.
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RailBus63
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2011 8:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are always going to be overnight runs, whether they are for casino patrons, intercity passengers or local transit riders. The key is to develop and establish common-sense regulations which set a maximum number of hours behind the wheel within a 24-hour period (and also within a 7-day period) and require designated rest times. Of course, nothing is going to prevent a casino bus driver from using his or her rest period to do a little gambling of their own! Electronic log monitoring is also likely needed, as there are questions about this driver fudging his log book. These regulations also need to be enforced with state and local police agencies.

There also needs to be more of a focus on truck and bus speeding on the nation’s highways. I do a fair amount of highway driving and I’m often passed by coaches and tractor-trailers doing 75 or so on the interstates (the Chinatown operators like Fung Wah, Lucky Star, etc. are notorious on the Massaachusetts Turnpike). When was the last time you saw a coach or a rig pulled over by a trooper with a radar gun?
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Hart Bus



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PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2011 9:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

According to the newspapers, the NYPD Motor Carrier Safety Unit did a surprise inspection of buses in Chinatown and several were pulled OOS.

Always takes a tragedy to bring enforcement of the rules.
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GBL Rebel
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Location: Long Island, N.Y.

PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2011 9:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

RailBus63 wrote:
Of course, nothing is going to prevent a casino bus driver from using his or her rest period to do a little gambling of their own! Electronic log monitoring is also likely needed, as there are questions about this driver fudging his log book. These regulations also need to be enforced with state and local police agencies.


News reports are coming out that this driver should not have been able to get a CDL licence. Can't wait to see the whole story at the end of the entire investigation.
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Mr. Linsky
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 12:49 am    Post subject: 'THE ASIAN CASINO CONNECTIONS' Reply with quote

'Casinos and Buses Cater to Asian Roots'

By DAVID W. CHEN
Published: March 15, 2011 The New York Times


They are fixtures in Chinese newspapers: promotions for the Mohegan Sun, Foxwoods and Bally’s casinos. And they list the bus departures, from Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Flushing, Queens.
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Andrew Sullivan for The New York Times

To serve their clientele, some signs at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., include Mandarin Chinese translations.
Related

At the gambling halls, Asian hosts, fluent in multiple dialects, welcome customers with koi ponds designed by feng shui consultants. Asian game rooms feature table games like pai gow poker and sic bo. For meal breaks, Asian restaurants in the casinos dish out congee and roast duck.

Gambling requires a certain amount of luck, but when it comes to wooing the huge pool of Asian-Americans in New York City, who fill buses bound for local casinos, as little as possible is left to chance.

It is part of an unspoken compact among the casinos, the bus companies and the city’s vast Chinese population, rooted in tradition, opportunity and vice. But it has come under a public spotlight after a bus crash on Saturday that killed 15 people returning to Chinatown from an outing to the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut.

For years, casinos and bus companies have relied on a symbiotic relationship to cater to an Asian-American clientele that accounts for as much as 25 percent of casino revenues.

Even after the last chips have been cashed, or the debts tallied, casinos stay in touch with their best customers by sending postcards highlighting future events like the Miss New York Chinese Beauty Pageant or concerts headlined by pop stars from Hong Kong.

The personal touch is common, as well, one marketing executive who has worked with casinos said. “They’ll call you up and say, ‘Why don’t you come up and have a special steak dinner on us? Why don’t you come up for a concert?’ ” said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to anger clients.

And even as investigators try to determine what caused the deadly accident on Saturday, one thing is certain: Given a spate of new casinos opening in Pennsylvania, the lucrative and sophisticated competition to lure those customers to Connecticut, Atlantic City and elsewhere will not just continue but most likely intensify.

Culture is one reason gambling is so popular among Asian-Americans, especially Chinese-Americans. Asian-Americans, carrying on a tradition from their homelands, embrace games of chance and skill like mah-jongg, both to make a bit of money and to be sociable; Las Vegas has long counted on a strong Asian clientele.

In Chinatown in New York City, generations of men have played tile games in basements. But with the emergence of Atlantic City in the late 1970s and Connecticut gambling halls in the late 1990s, casinos became the preferred outlet, said Paul J. Q. Lee, a longtime community leader in Chinatown, and a former owner of a bus company that traveled to casinos.

These days, virtually every casino has an Asian marketing department, ensuring that cultural sensitivities are accommodated.

The Mount Airy casino, in the Poconos, enlisted several designers versed in feng shui. Some casinos assiduously avoid using the numbers 4 and 10, which sound like the Chinese word for death. Mohegan Sun has a Chinese-language Web site featuring the fortuitous number eight three times.

To reach their customers, casinos rely on the machinery of an old-fashioned political campaign: direct mail, newspaper advertisements and posters. But social media? Not much.

“They’re not going to go to Facebook,” said Peter Yee, assistant executive director of behavioral health at Hamilton-Madison House, a social service center on the Lower East Side. “They’re going to go to someone’s uncle. It’s word of mouth.”

And casinos know their customer base. On Tuesday, for instance, The World Journal, the leading Chinese daily newspaper catering to Mandarin speakers, featured advertisements for casino buses to Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods with pick-up locations chiefly in Flushing and Elmhurst, both of which have large Mandarin-speaking populations. But Sing Tao, the leading paper for Cantonese speakers, emphasized pick-up locations for buses to Bally’s, Tropicana and other casinos in Cantonese neighborhoods like Sunset Park and Chinatown.

The promotions are similar. For as little as $8 per bus ticket, customers are offered a free meal (worth $15) and a gambling voucher (worth up to $45).

Some community leaders criticize the casinos as preying upon a vulnerable and predominantly elderly population. “You make these things attractive, easy and available, and not everybody has self-control,” said Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian-American studies at Hunter College. “It’s almost like McDonald’s giving out free burgers to kids so they can get hooked on it.”

Others say that while the marketing may be predatory, the trips to nearby casinos are harmless. “I see people bringing their kids up there,” said Mr. Yee, who calls himself a recreational gambler. “There’s a whole subculture that exists.”

One integral part to the success — or failure — of a casino trip is the relationship between the casinos and the bus operators. In many cases, casinos provide subsidies to the bus companies that can offset most, if not all, of the buses’ operating costs. “The casinos work very closely with the bus operators,” said George Toth. a former chief executive of Mount Airy in Pennsylvania, and the Sands in Atlantic City.

The buses themselves have their own subculture, and even a hierarchy, said Mr. Lee, the former bus company owner.

In the front are the regulars, people who go to the casinos several times a week and are easily recognized by bus operators. These often include grandmothers who have a couple of hundred dollars, thanks to their own savings and money from the children. Behind them are the waiters who have just been paid, and are likely to carry a lot of cash, and the newcomers. And in the back, near the bathroom, are the non-Chinese and people who want only to pick up a free meal and to sell their vouchers at a discount.

Orchestrating it all is the “tour guide,” or “daoyou” in Chinese. Often an illegal immigrant, she (and it is almost always a she) functions as a multitasking, ticket-collecting, peace-making liaison. “These individuals are very, very important,” Mr. Lee said. “They make sure that Mrs. Wong from East Broadway is happy.”

The tour guide often sits in the front, chatting nonstop with the bus driver, making sure the driver does not fall asleep, especially on overnight trips. It is not clear what happened on the fateful bus crash on Saturday, but one of the 15 people killed was the tour guide.

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, New York


Buses pick up passengers bound for a casino from Flushing, Queens, which has a large Mandarin-speaking population.
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
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