A Greyhound bus driver’s fatigue caused the fatal collision with three semitrucks illegally parked on the shoulder of an exit ramp near Highland two years ago, a National Transportation Safety Board investigation has determined.
The crash happened just before 2 a.m. on Wednesday, July 12, 2023, at the Silver Lake Rest Area off of Interstate 70. The bus was en route from Indianapolis to St. Louis.
Three bus passengers died at the scene: Bradley Donovan, 47, of Springfield; Buford Paya, 71, from Arizona; and Juan Vasquez-Rodriguez, 34, from New Jersey. The bus driver and 11 other passengers were injured, including some who weren’t wearing seat belts.
The NTSB announced the findings from its investigation into the Madison County crash on Tuesday.
The safety board said Greyhound shares some responsibility for the crash because it gave the driver a “highly irregular” work schedule that likely disrupted his sleep. The company also failed to discipline him for a history of risky driving behavior before the fatal collision, including another crash in 2018 when law enforcement determined he was driving while fatigued, according to the board’s investigation.
Greyhound said in a statement that it has cooperated with the NTSB but declined to comment further, citing ongoing litigation.
Two injured passengers and a woman whose husband died in the crash filed lawsuits against Greyhound, the bus driver, the truck drivers and the companies who own the vehicles involved in the crash.
A wrongful death lawsuit settled for an undisclosed amount in 2024. The two passenger lawsuits remain ongoing. Greyhound and the bus driver denied any negligence in their responses to the ongoing cases.
The bus driver, 60-year-old Raymond Paradise, was also cited for three traffic violations related to the crash, including improper lane usage, failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident and driving too fast for conditions.
Paradise, who is from O’Fallon, Missouri, entered a plea of not guilty in Madison County Circuit Court. J. William Lucco, Paradise’s attorney in that case, couldn’t immediately be reached for further comment.
The truck drivers weren’t cited for parking illegally.
Federal regulations set limits on how long truck drivers can work before they have to find a place to pull over and rest. And law enforcement officers know there often aren’t enough parking spaces available, a problem the safety board said contributed to the I-70 crash.
The Silver Lake Rest Area has just 21 parking spots for commercial trucks, and the next closest rest stop is 76 miles away.
Daniel Walsh, an investigator for the board, said there had been two other crashes in the past 10 years at the Silver Lake Rest Area involving semitrucks parked on the shoulders of the ramps.
The board noted that Illinois added 122 parking spaces across the state in 2023 and that U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, has proposed federal legislation to further increase parking.
“When exhausted truckers are forced to choose between pushing that extra mile to find safe parking or pull over on the shoulder of busy interstates and offramps, you’ve got a recipe for disaster. That’s exactly what we witnessed here in Southern Illinois,” Bost said in a statement Tuesday.
The congressman said he hoped the final report from the NTSB investigation would give the legislation momentum in Congress.
What the federal investigation found
Before the crash, Paradise had been awake for more than 17 hours, including 13 hours on duty. Investigators found no evidence that he rested in the hotel room provided by Greyhound or in the bus terminal breakroom for drivers during a four-and-a-half-hour layover in Indianapolis.
The National Transportation Safety Board provided a snapshot of his work schedule from three weeks before the crash as an example of how it could disrupt his sleep:
- June 21 shift began at 3 a.m.
- June 22 shift began at 4:30 p.m.
- June 23 shift began around 10:30 a.m.
It determined a schedule like that put Paradise “constantly at risk to the effects of fatigue while on duty.”
Board member Michael Graham highlighted that finding when the NTSB discussed the final report from the investigation in a virtual meeting Tuesday.
“‘Constantly at risk’ — That sounds like an accident waiting to happen. And it was,” Graham said.
Board member Tom Chapman said he was surprised by the bus driver’s schedule based on his experience working on flight and duty time practices in the airline industry.
“I’m not suggesting that airline practices are perfect — they’re not — but you don’t see this kind of variable scheduling in the airline industry, and it’s because there’s a very keen understanding of the dangers of that,” Chapman said.
The board previously recommended that Greyhound employ more consistent scheduling for drivers after another bus crash in 1998, but it said the company “reverted to unsafe practices.” Michael Fox, a senior highway accident investigator for the board, noted during Tuesday’s meeting that Greyhound was sold in 2021 to FlixMobility, another bus company.
Beyond Greyhound’s work scheduling practices, the board also raised concerns about its employee discipline process.
Two months before the crash, Paradise was put on Greyhound’s “Top 20 List,” a monthly ranking of drivers with the highest number of violations flagged by the company’s driver monitoring system, for issues that included speeding, rolling stops and following too closely.
And he had been involved in another crash caused by fatigue, according to the safety board investigation, which cited a police report. The May 2018 collision occurred at 11:30 p.m. when Paradise rear-ended a moving semitruck on Interstate 15 in California. Police said he was fatigued and driving at an unsafe speed for traffic conditions.
Paradise racked up written reprimands, but the board found that there were no consequences.
Once in 2019, when Paradise was reprimanded for driving 77 mph in a 55 mph zone, a supervisor stated, “you are hereby cautioned that future occurrences of this nature will result in progressive discipline up to and including termination.”
Paradise received seven more reprimands for speeding after that and wasn’t suspended or terminated, the board said.
As a result of its investigation, the NTSB is recommending that Greyhound revise its scheduling and discipline practices and require drivers to brief passengers on wearing seat belts. It also recommends federal efforts to expand commercial truck parking.
The night of the fatal bus crash
Passengers on the Greyhound bus who were interviewed by police and the safety board reported noticing the driver swerving onto the highway rumble strips before the crash near Highland. A few suspected he was falling asleep.
Investigators believe he intended to continue driving on I-70, but he followed the curve of the road near the rest area, which led him onto the exit ramp. He would have had to steer left to stay on the highway. The Silver Lake Rest Area was 35 minutes away from their final destination.
The driver didn’t apply the breaks during the collision, which investigators said is evidence of a “diminished state of alertness.”
The collision with the parked trucks tore a hole in the side of the bus that was more than 24 feet wide and 6 feet high.
The first six rows of seats on that side were sheared away at the base of the frames. The three passengers who died were all seated in window seats in these rows; only one was wearing a seat belt. The coroner determined their cause of death was blunt trauma to the chest, abdomen and head.
Seven seriously injured passengers weren’t wearing seat belts. The driver had minor injuries.
Joseph Crusinbery, one of the injured passengers who has filed a lawsuit for damages, described seeing the crash coming in an interview with the NTSB.
“(The bus driver) wasn’t trying to correct the path of the bus whatsoever, not turning the steering wheel,” Crusinbery told an investigator. “And then I heard the other tires hit those rumblers. And I looked up, and I saw the tractor trailer, the back of it, a white one, coming towards us. And I immediately was like, ‘OK, we’re going to hit.’”
He said he pulled the woman sitting next to him away from the window as they braced for impact.
Some of the passengers and semitruck drivers helped people off the bus as first responders arrived and located people trapped under debris.
Four medical helicopters and 11 ambulances responded to the scene. Crusinbery was among the passengers taken to the hospital by ambulance with a concussion, back injury and bruising.
Maria Gonzalez, another passenger who is suing for damages, said she injured her ribs, neck and back after she was thrown around the interior of the bus, according to her complaint.
Terry Feero filed the now-settled wrongful death lawsuit. She lost her husband in the crash, 47-year-old Bradley Donovan.
Editor's note: This story was originally published by the Belleville News-Democrat. Lexi Cortes is a reporter for the BND, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
