A rollover bus crash that killed two Chinese tourists and injured eight others wouldn’t have had such tragic results had a Carson-based bus dealer spent less than $200 and equipped the vehicle with seat belts, an attorney told a jury Friday, but a lawyer for the company said his clients weren’t responsible for the manufacture or design of the tour van.
In his opening statement in trial of a lawsuit brought against BusWest by surviving passengers and relatives of those who were killed, plaintiffs’ lawyer David Lira said seven of the 10 tourists who were without seat belts were ejected as the 2006 Starcraft bus was being driven on a two-lane Arizona road from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon on Oct. 17, 2010.
“The defendants chose not to spend $168 to equip the bus with seat belts,” said Lira, who maintains the van was lacking in “crashworthiness.”
Only the driver and one of two tour guides on board had seats equipped with seat belts, Lira said.
“They walked away without injury,” Lira told the Los Angeles Superior Court jury.
But attorney Douglas Robinson, on behalf of BusWest, said responsibility for the accident lies with the driver, Zhi Lu, and his employer, Industry- based TBE International Inc., which bought the van from BusWest in March 2008.
TBE’s owner, Betti Chi, chose to buy the bus without passenger seat belts, he said. And although she had buses available with seat belts, she elected not to provide one of those vehicles to these particular tourists, according to Robinson.
“If she wanted to put these passengers on a bus with seat belts, she could have done so,” Robinson said.
Robinson also said that even though BusWest was not responsible for making or designing the bus, the vehicle was not defective simply because it did not have seat belts. He said BusWest used reasonable care, that many factors are involved in designing a bus, and that seat belts in this case would not necessarily have made a major difference.
“They don’t guarantee safe outcomes,” Robinson said.
According to Lira, the passengers were on a whirlwind, two-week trip to the East and West coasts. They had wrapped up visits to New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and were on the final leg of the trip. All were civil engineers in China with advanced degrees, he said.
Lira showed jurors photos of the two passengers killed, 44-year-old Qin Peng and 47-year-old Keer Huang. One of the injured passengers, 47-year-old Zhe Xue Hou, lost his left leg after part of the bus rolled over him when he was ejected, according to Lira. Also seriously hurt was 54-year-old Rong Xiang Cheng, a Chinese tour guide who accompanied the tourists on the entire trip, Lira said. She suffered a broken pelvis, and all but three of her ribs were broken, he said.
The American tour guide who was unhurt worked for TBE International, Lira said.
Lira said the speed limit for the road was 55 mph, but that the driver failed to slow down to a posted maximum of 35 mph as he approached a curve. The van drifted into the dirt shoulder, overturned and landed on its wheels after he tried to get back onto the pavement, according to Lira.
“The highest rate of fatalities are rollovers,” Lira said. “The bus industry knows that.”
Lira said the surviving passengers collectively had more than $1 million in medical costs. But Robinson said jurors will have to decide whether it is reasonable for the plaintiffs to ask for damages for their medical care when none have returned to the United States since the accident.
Robinson’s court papers state that TBE, Chi, Starcraft and its owners, Forest River Inc., settled with the plaintiffs before trial for a collective total of $8.25 million.
— City News Service