Japan bus operator president, manager convicted over fatal 2016 crash

Too bad, usually small company with no political backup will pay of full consequences. Bigger will leave the top untouched.

So it took almost 7 YEARS to come up with a conviction? Was he already in prison awaiting the conviction or was he free to move about, I wonder?

Failure to predict an accident? This is overreach. Will definitely be junked on appeal.

The assumption here is that a license to drive a large bus, presumably oogata (large vehicle) dai 2 (taxi and bus) license, is not enough to drive a bus. Companies need to give license holders extra training.

My own suspicion is that the driver was half asleep, possibly due to meds or some medical condition (mini heart attack etc)

Failure to predict an accident? This is overreach

If there is a reason why an accident was more likely to happen and the company did not correct that this can be a valid argument to prove the negligence.

Sorry, but the driver was licensed to drive the bus, so he met the legal requirements to drive it. Being able to operate the gears and brakes is necessary to obtain the license. I have a commercial drivers license, which is no walk-in-the-park to get. Lastly (and not mentioned in the story), the driver had run this route before more than once. The reason for the operator’s conviction is the Japanese idea of community responsibility, which is one of those things which I find disagreeable about Japan. The driver hadn’t been overworked, and a co-driver was onboard for safety sake. You won’t catch me setting up a tour bus business in Japan.

Yes, this is a weird judgement that says it is irresponsible to trust a person with a bus license to drive a bus.

Video footage shows the brake lights not coming on as the bus hurtles downhill. This suggests to me the driver was somehow incapacitated, with enough consciousness to operate the steering wheel but not much else.

The other problem is that the bus was only on this road because it was ahead of schedule and was wasting time so as to not arrive early at the ski resort. It had deliberately left whatever that highway is called (to me, its the Fujioka to Koshoku branch of the Nagano expressway) and deliberately taking a longer route on regular roads just to pass time. It was on these regular roads, which are far more mountainous and treacherous than the expressway, where the bus crashed. Buses in Japan are not allowed to arrive early, especially during the night. Since people want to sleep on overnight buses like this, passengers themselves may not want to arrive early or take extra stops that might wake them up.

Greed conquers all. Multi victim accidents take place too often in Asia. Whether it be hundreds of students in Korea or dozens of sightseers in boating or bus accidents in Japan, monetary enrichment overrides reasonable safety concerns for customers.

Failure to predict an accident? This is overreach. Will definitely be junked on appeal.

No, probably not. If you study mishaps (old Navy Safety Officer speaking) you pretty much know what to do to prevent mishaps. We used to say "the rules are written in blood" and "there are no new mishaps, just new victims". Failure to follow safety procedures, cutting corners on maintenance, running drivers over the legal number of hours, failure to perform a brake and light check before each trip, overloading, bald tires, underinflated tires, broken springs (the driver is supposed to stick his or her head in the wheel well and check them) etc., are all know causes of motor vehicle mishaps A company who's leadership is more concerned with the bottom line than safety is a mishap waiting to happen. It is actually quite predictable when viewed from outside the company.