Accident Report Detail

​About 5:40 a.m. on March 25, 1983, a Jonesboro School District schoolbus was traveling westbound on State Highway 214 near Newport, Arkansas. The schoolbus was transporting 31 high school students and 7 teachers from Jonesboro, Arkansas, to the Annual State Skills Olympics for vocational-technical students in Little Rock, Arkansas. As the schoolbus traveled through a relatively sharp right curve leading to a T-intersection with State Highway 18, it slid across the centerline onto the opposing land's shoulder and through a stop sign; it continued to yaw and slide across Highway 18, where it overturned and struck the far edge of a roadside drainage ditch. The teacher-driver, 4 other teachers, and 4 students were killed, and 2 teachers and 27 students were injured.

​The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the driver's failure to slow the schoolbus to a proper speed for negotiating a curve that led to a T-intersection with a stop sign and that had advance "curve" and "stop ahead" warning signs and an advisory speed still Contributing to the accident were the deficiencies of the intersection design and signing system, and the lack of reporting of a large number of low severity accidents and incidents at the curve that would have effectively alerted the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department to deficiencies in the intersection design and signing system.