School bus passengers accounted for 6% of crash deaths, NSC data shows

Council recorded 110 school bus crash deaths in 2024, a 14% decrease from 2023

School bus passengers accounted for 6% of deaths reported in school-bus-related crashes over a nine-year period beginning in 2015, suggesting such fatalities were relatively rare, according to the National Safety Council. Drivers and cyclists accounted for 4% and 3% of deaths reported in school bus crashes, the council said, asserting that riding school buses statistically was safer for children than riding in a car or walking to class.

The council’s most recent data showed 110 deaths related to school bus crashes in 2024, a 14% decrease from 128 deaths in 2023. Over the nine-year period beginning in 2015, about 71% of school-bus-related crash deaths involved occupants of other vehicles and 15% of those fatalities involved pedestrians, according to that data.

The figures surfaced in coverage of a Monday collision in central Florida. A 10th-grade Winter Haven High School student and one other person died when a school bus carrying 39 occupants rolled over after a three-vehicle collision in Winter Haven, the Polk County sheriff’s office said.

About 26 of the 37 students aboard the bus were taken to hospitals, the sheriff’s office said in a statement posted to Facebook. The bus also carried a driver and the driver’s daughter.

The crash unfolded at about 6:13 a.m. local time and involved three vehicles, according to authorities. Officials said at a news conference that the bus was traveling properly in its lane when a white Chevy Malibu going in the opposite direction careened across the roadway’s centerline “for unknown reasons” and smashed into the school bus. The car hit the bus’s tandem rear wheels, making it lose traction while evidently ripping one of its tires off. The bus then crossed the center line into oncoming traffic itself and struck a silver Jeep head-on, officials said.

“It was a horrible crash,” Grady Judd, Polk County’s sheriff, said. “It was a terrible, tragic morning. We had a beautiful 10th grade girl lose her life.”

A spokesperson for the Polk County public school district said the late 10th-grader had been a student at Winter Haven High School (WHHS).

“This is devastating news for WHHS and our community,” said a district statement, according to the local news outlet WESH. “We are praying for the victims and their families.”

The second person killed in the crash was “an occupant from one of the [two] other vehicles” involved, authorities said.