Bus driver's condition may have caused crash
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
The driver of a tour bus carrying 40 young visitors from a Japanese beauty school Saturday may have suffered from a medical condition that caused him to slump over the steering wheel as the bus careened across the southbound lanes of Likelike Highway and crashed, police said yesterday.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
The driver, a 65-year-old Honolulu man, remained in critical condition at The Queen's Medical Center this morning.
A woman carries an injured bus rider from a tour bus that crashed Saturday night on Likelike Highway.
An official at the Honolulu office of the Consulate General of Japan said the young men and women from the beauty school suffered mostly minor injuries and expect to fly back to Japan today. Most of the visitors were between 18 and 20 years old.
The bus was returning to Honolulu about 10:45 p.m. after a trip to the Polynesian Cultural Center when the accident occurred.
Witnesses town-bound on Likelike told authorities that, judging from the brake lights of the 55-seat Polynesian Hospitality bus, the driver had been attempting to stop before he lost control and slammed into a median guardrail.
When the driver slumped in his seat, a passenger aboard the bus grabbed the steering wheel, said Honolulu Police Sgt. John Agno. The passenger couldn't get the bus back under control.
The bus crossed into the far right lane, left the road, climbed an embankment and rolled back onto the pavement, landing on its side and trapping the driver's left arm.
The passengers, 40 tourists from the Toyoriyo Biyo vocational school, a beauty school in the Chiba prefecture, were temporarily trapped inside. They hoisted each other up through the rooftop emergency exits, which were perpendicular to the road after the crash. Fire Capt. Kenison Tejada said they were nearly all out of the bus as authorities arrived.
Fire crews cut the driver from the wreckage.
Jason Kaneshiro, a district chief for Emergency Medical Services, said yesterday that an EMS chief drove up to the bus shortly after the accident and helped to dispatch the ambulance crews.
Paramedics resuscitated the driver, who was in very critical condition when they transported him to Queen's, Kaneshiro said.
Eighteen people were taken to Straub Clinic & Hospital and six were taken to Kuakini Medical Center..
Most of the patients were treated and released, Kaneshiro said.
Another tour bus took the remaining visitors to their hotels.
A Japan Consulate official said all of the injured visitors had been released from the hospitals and were recuperating well yesterday.
