Ex-bus firm official appeals guilty ruling over fatal 2016 crash

I think the company directors weren’t driving the bus.

A horrible accident, and while of course we all want those responsible to be held accountable, I've got questions about this one.

Was the driver licensed to drive the type of bus in question? If so, then it really needs to be asked how the manager could have foreseen the accident.

A driver with the proper license would be presumed able to drive the bus, no?

And that he was "inexperienced" seems like flimsy grounds for saying the manager should have foreseen the accident.

Every licensed driver is inexperienced when they first start driving. The only way for Tsuchiya-san to go from "inexperienced" to "experienced" is to drive those buses and get the experience.

If an inexperienced driver is never allowed to drive, he'll never become an experienced one.

Seems to me that as long as he was licensed to drive the type of bus involved, holding the manager criminally responsible is questionable at best.

I hate to think that company managers and owners, especially in safety-heavy industries such as transportation, will be held criminally responsible for employees' errors or recklessness when they had no way of foreseeing it.

The manager seems dedicated to destroy his image in the eyes of the public as much as possible, making an appeal is his right, but with such a clear argument from the prosecution this seems like a desperate attempt to avoid taking responsibility for his role in the tragedy.

Where did the Driver take and pass his Japanese Bus Drivers test, and who issued him his license. No one in the Bus Company, that's for sure.

I think the company directors weren’t driving the bus.

Where did the Driver take and pass his Japanese Bus Drivers test, and who issued him his license. No one in the Bus Company, that's for sure.

Upper management, i.e. the company directors, are responsible for employees and lower level managers hiring qualified staff, staff adhering to laws regarding required inspections, maintenance and driver hours of service, as well as ensuring required periodic training is carried out. If those things are not happening and are considered by mishap investigators to be causes of the mishap in question then top management is very much culpable for the deaths, injuries and property losses caused by the mishap. If the driver worked more than the legal number of hours or the bus had bald tires, worn out brakes, air leaks in the brake system, or the driver was unqualified (maybe a license expired or the driver didn't have a recent valid commercial drivers physical exam on file) then upper management gets a vacation in the gray bar hotel. Or at least that is how it should work.

Where did the Driver take and pass his Japanese Bus Drivers test, and who issued him his license.

In the US at least it is possible to have a Class B license with a Passenger Endorsement that would legally qualify one to drive anything from a 16 passenger minibus up to a full sized transit bus or tour bus, but that doesn't mean the driver knows how to operate a particular piece of equipment safely. Each bus is different ( I drove buses to pay for my undergraduate degree ). Some have automatic transmissions but others have manual transmissions. A subset of those will have non-synchro manual transmissions which require a great deal of practice to drive safely. Going down hills some buses have retarders and some do not. Did the driver in this case know how to use the retarder going down a hill? Or did the driver use only the wheel brakes, fry them and lose control? The company should have taken the driver out with an instructor for a few hours to see if the driver could handle the equipment and if not, provide the required training.