Feds: Signage among factors in fatal team bus crash

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Inadequate signage and traffic control devices on a Georgia interstate contributed to a 2007 bus crash that killed seven people, including five college baseball players, federal investigators concluded Tuesday.

Driver error was also a factor in the March 2007 crash on Interstate 75 just north of downtown Atlanta, the National Transportation Safety Board reported.

The bus driver -- transporting 33 members of the Bluffton University baseball team -- took a high-occupancy vehicle exit ramp apparently believing it was a through lane, the NTSB said. The ramp ended at a T intersection but the bus did not stop, hurtling over an overpass wall and plunging 19 feet to the road below.

The probable cause of the crash was the driver's mistaking the HOV exit ramp for an HOV through lane, the NTSB said in its report.

"Contributing to the driver's mistake was the failure of the Georgia Department of Transportation to install adequate traffic control devices to identify and distinguish the two different HOV lanes," the report said.

Five members of the baseball team from Bluffton, outside Toledo, Ohio, died as a result of the crash, along with the bus driver and his wife. Twenty-eight others were injured in the crash, seven seriously, the NTSB said.

The team had been going south on I-75, headed to games in Sarasota and Fort Myers, Florida.

The HOV lane splits just ahead of the interchange. One lane continues toward downtown Atlanta, while the other lane -- the one the bus took -- becomes an off-ramp. After the crash, investigators found no skid marks leading up to a stop sign at the top of the ramp.

Within two weeks after the crash, the Georgia Department of Transportation added traffic indicators delineating the exit and increased the size and number of signs at the exit, said spokeswoman Crystal Paulk-Buchanan. Also, the department increased signage on the overpass and added a concrete island.

The NTSB found that the severity of the crash would have been reduced if the bus had seat belts. The agency for years has been advocating seat belts for buses.

As part of its report, it reiterated four recommendations first made in 1999 to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration "regarding the need for improved motorcoach occupant protection systems and the installation of on-board recording systems that record vehicle parameters and crash data."

The agency also recommended to Georgia transportation officials that additional signage and traffic control devices be placed at the exit.

"We heard quite clearly the recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board," Georgia DOT Commissioner Gena Abraham said. "We do understand. We are going to consider every option put before us by the NTSB and the Federal Highway Administration ... Any loss of life on our highway system is tragic and taken very seriously by this department."

In Ohio, relatives of those who died expressed grief and frustration, saying the deaths could have been prevented.

"From my perspective, and I think from our perspective -- I think I believe I speak for all of us in that regard -- is that the apathy has gone on too long," said John Betts, whose son David died in the crash.

"These recommendations were made 40 years ago, and specifically in 1999," Betts said. "Had any of those recommendations been implemented ... our sons would be alive today. That's not a wish. That's not a fantasy. That's a fact."

Betts told reporters: "That's the most frustrating piece for any of the family members is that this was preventable. Not the accident -- accidents will occur. HOV lanes can be corrected. My son cannot be brought back."

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