Product Description

The story of corporate negligence and drunk driving that led to deaths for twenty-seven children and adults in a Kentucky school bus reveals the family who refused to settle their lawsuit and helped change standards to protect all children. 25,000 first printing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #833607 in Books
• Published on: 1994-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 379 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In a shocking expose of the nation's school buses, Kunen (The Strawberry Statement) focuses on the 1988 head-on collision of a Kentucky school bus and a pickup truck driven by an intoxicated motorist, which killed 24 children and three adults aboard the bus. Kunen had the cooperation of Janey and Larry Fair, whose daughter Shannon was among the victims. The Fairs and another victim's parents, the Nunnallees (whom he also interviewed) initially rejected a settlement offer from Ford, maker of the bus. Instead, the couples pressed the corporation for safety improvements. During a 1992 trial, both couples decided to settle; each was awarded $5 million. The trial and federal hearings indicated that the 27 deaths resulted from an exposed fuel tank, flammable seating materials which emitted toxic fumes, and inadequate safety exits. Many, perhaps most, U.S. school buses today have the same hazards. Using the Kentucky tragedy as a vehicle, Kunen has written a compelling report that deserves the national attention accorded Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
On May 14, 1988, a fiery school bus crash near Carrollton, Kentucky, took the lives of 27 adults and teenagers; it was caused by a drunk driver going the wrong way on an interstate highway. The crash raised sensitivities about drunk driving, but, more importantly, it raised issues about school bus safety. The real revelation in journalist Kunen's book is the story of how two families successfully sued Ford Motor Company, which knowingly manufactured buses that had severe safety defects. Fuel tanks were not shielded to prevent rupture, fire seats were made of flammable polyurethane, and there was a single emergency rear door. The book incorporates many first-person accounts, court records, and records of interviews; of real note is a transcript of a meeting with then President Richard Nixon, Lee Iacocca, Henry Ford II, and John Ehrlichman about safety. Recommended for public libraries.
William A. McIntyre, New Hampshire Technical Coll. Lib., Nashua
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Part tabloid-style tearjerker, part sophisticated corporate expos‚, by a former People magazine crime writer and bestselling author (The Strawberry Statement, 1969). On May 14, 1988, just outside Carrollton, Ky., a drunk-driving ne'er-do-well named Larry Mahoney slammed his Toyota pickup into a schoolbus carrying 63 children. The impact set the bus's fuel tank on fire. Twenty-seven died and 16 were hospitalized with burns. Only two families opted not to settle with Mahoney's insurers and the bus manufacturers. The Fairs, parents of Shannon, 14 when she died, and the Nunnallees, parents of Patty, who was 10, hired John P. Coale, Esq., the self-styled ``master of disaster'' who had represented the city of Bhopal in the Union Carbide gas leak. Coale charged the Ford Motor Company (and Sheller-Globe, which assembled the schoolbus for Ford) with ``consciously disregarding'' the danger they were creating by placing an unshielded fuel tank next to the front door of a bus that had ``flammable seats, inadequate emergency exits and a too-narrow aisle.'' Kunen's lingering account of the crash and its aftermath makes for excruciating reading, especially when he abandons taste for cheap effect. For example, describing a videotape of Shannon and her friends forming a cheerleader's pyramid, he writes: ``Was that pyramid, in that room, in that house, in that moment, on a sort of raft, borne on a river of time toward a bus crash waiting downstream?'' Kunen is on firmer ground when he describes, in meticulous detail, Ford's long history of subverting national safety standards in the name of cost- effectiveness. The book's strongest section focuses on Ford's tawdry behavior during the trial (arguing, among other things, that a schoolbus is a ``truck,'' not a ``bus,'' and therefore not subject to the safety standards of passenger vehicles). You'll want to avert your eyes as Kunen recreates the accident in all its blood and tears, but hang on for some impressive corporate muckraking. (8 pages of b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

James Kunen did an exceptional job.
I had seen a road sign in Kentucky referring to a bus crash, but didn't know anything about it. One day I saw Mr. Kunen's book at a local bookstore and realized it was the same thing. When I started reading the book I couldn't put it down. Up until that day it was a road sign; afterwards it was a tragic memorial to the death of the innocent.

Excellent
My math teacher was on the bus when it crashed and allowed me to read one of his two copies of this book, 3 of his friends were killed and if it was n't for his other friend he would have died too for he was sitting 3 rows from the front and saw the youth director get blown up when the explosion occured.

Best Book I EVER read
This book was fascinating from the first page until the last. Mr.Kunen has a way with words that will grip the reader as he did me. The intimate details of the crash and the lives of the young victims will bring a tear to your eye. And how Ford Motors was defeated in the end will have you cheering in a bittersweet way. A masterpiece. I have read hundreds of books and this book tops my list to this day even though I first read it 6 years ago.