Dropped coffee flask, wedged under brake and on top of accelerator, is suspected freak cause of New York bus crash that killed three
- Rattling metal, then the curses of the driver, are heard on a sound recording of the moments before the mysterious 2017 accident
- The brake was never applied during the crash that killed the driver, a passenger on another bus and a pedestrian
A dropped coffee flask wedged behind the brake and on top of the accelerator pedals of a charter bus may have been behind a 2017 crash in Flushing, New York, that killed three people, US transport investigators said Thursday.
The motorcoach ran a red light at roughly 60 miles per hour (100km/h) and crashed into a New York City Transit Authority bus in September 2017, killing the coach’s driver, a passenger on the city bus and a pedestrian, according to a final report on the accident released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Investigators found a metal vacuum flask near the motorcoach’s brake and accelerator pedals at the scene of the crash, according to the report. It said that a sound of metal rattling could be heard shortly before the accident on a video and sound recorder installed on the bus that was recovered after the accident.
Three seconds after the sound began, the driver said “Oh [expletive]” and the bus accelerated at maximum throttle, the NTSB said. Data taken from the bus showed the brakes were not applied, the agency said.