KEY POINTS:
An Upper Hutt student is lucky to be alive after the loading forks of a rubbish truck smashed through the window of a school bus, centimetres above his head.
"The spikes which pick up rubbish came through the window and I was sitting right beside where they came
in," Joe Sambrooke said.
"The whole window shattered over me and three or four other guys. It all happened quite fast,"
Mr Sambrooke, 17, said he had seen the truck approaching the intersection of Fergusson Drive and Sutherland Ave in Upper Hutt about 8am yesterday, but assumed it would stop. Instead, the truck ploughed into the school bus, which was crossing the intersection on a green light.
Mr Sambrooke was taken to Hutt Hospital, where he was treated for cuts to his left ear and cuts on his left kneecap were stitched.
It was the second of three crashes involving school buses in as many days. Another school bus was involved in an accident in the Auckland suburb of Westmere yesterday afternoon.
It was from the Party Bus Company, as was the bus in the first of the crashes, which happened on Monday in West Auckland, injuring 19.
Party Bus Company director Gary Mills said last night that the cause of yesterday's accident would be investigated.
"To my knowledge a car pulled in front of the bus ... I'm not sure what happened but there were no injuries at all," he said. "It's terrible. We haven't had any incidents in 12 years and we have two incidents in three days ... it's unbelievable."
No one was hurt in the accident.
In the Upper Hutt accident, police Sergeant Rodger Hough said the driver of the Waste Management truck was not speeding but had failed to stop.
"We will be charging him. The truck has gone through a red light into the side of the school bus."
Five students were taken to hospital. One suffered rib injuries and the other four had cuts and bruises. The student with injured ribs was "knocked around quite a bit", Mr Sambrooke said.
St Patrick's College principal Philip Mahoney said the school bus was carrying 25 students aged 14 to 18. "When the other 20 students arrived in school they met the school counsellor. They were quite subdued once the shock hit in and they realised that it could have been much worse."
Mr Mahoney said the bus was "a bit of a mess".
"There was a lot of glass and a big hole in the side of the bus."
He said if safety belts were needed in cars, they were needed in buses. "When you have an accident like this you begin to think of anything you can do to improve the chances of the students."
But a spokesman for Land Transport New Zealand said seatbelts on buses had been considered in 2000 and there were no plans to review the matter again.
"Overall, school buses are by far the safest way, statistically, for kids to get to and from school," he said.
The 2000 study found the cost of fitting seatbelts on buses would be more than $500 a seat.
