Two children and a public worker were hospitalized Monday afternoon following the crash of a school bus and city truck.
The approximate 2 p.m. crash occurred in North Branford, about 10 miles east of New Haven, at the intersection of Forest Road and Mill Road.
Police said the Branford Board of Education bus was heading south when it collided with a Town of North Branford Department of Public Works truck at a stop sign preparing to make a turn. The two vehicles collided as the truck tried to turn north.
Police said there were two children on the school bus at the time; both were transported to a local hospital for observation.
The driver of the DPW truck was hospitalized and treated for minor injuries.
A police investigation is underway, but the incident was characterized as an accident.
The collision comes after eight students were injured when a school bus crashed in Manchester, Conn. in November 2024. The cause of that crash is believed to have been distracted driving.
“It’s happening more and more and it’s not good,” Vernon Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Joseph Macary told the Hartford Courant. “I don’t think it’s a school bus problem. I think it’s a societal problem. More than speeding or DUIs, I think distracted driving is the biggest problem.”
A similar crash injured four students in Hartford last October.
School bus-related crashes killed 128 people nationwide in 2023 in the most-recent available data, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Between 2014 and 2023, about 71% of the deaths were occupants of other vehicles.
In that same time period, school bus passengers accounted for 34% of the injuries, 9% were school bus drivers, and 52% were occupants of other vehicles. The remainder included pedestrians, cyclists, others or were unknown.
