A teen driver has been airlifted to hospital after a head-on collision with a school bus.
RCMP said around 12:30 p.m. officers were called to a crash between a car and a school bus at the Otterburne turnoff on Highway 59. STARS said the crash was a head-on collision that happened almost 5 kilometres north of St. Pierre Jolys.
The Red River Valley School Division has confirmed with CTV News the bus was carrying students from the division, but wouldn’t tell us which school the students were from.
RCMP said there were no injuries to any passengers on the bus, but the driver of the vehicle was taken to hospital by STARS Air Ambulance.
In a statement to CTV News, STARS said the driver – a man in his teens, was taken to hospital in critical condition.
Jason VandenBoer said his eight-year-old son Julian was on the school bus heading to swimming lessons when the crash happened.
He said Julian is scared, sore, and his glasses are broken, but he is doing okay.
“It’s definitely an excruciating time,” VandenBoer told CTV News. “It's a pretty big event for a kid that age – to be on the side of the road and see everything kind of unfold the way it did with the other driver and STARS being there and everybody else. It was quite a dramatic event for a kid.”
The parent said there were a number of other students on the bus wasn’t sure how many exactly.
“(The bus) got banged pretty hard, like hard enough that the kids bounced around quite a bit on the inside,” VandenBoer said.
He said he credits the quick thinking of the bus driver for the minimal injuries to the students.
“The (bus) driver did what he could with the vehicle to try and keep it from being a whole lot worse of a situation than it actually was. The driver absolutely did a great job,” VandenBoer said. “It could have been catastrophic.”
RCMP has no other details available at this time.
