18 Kindergarten Kids Killed in China Bus Crash

An overloaded school minibus crashed head-on with a truck in rural western Chine on Wednesday, killing at least 18 kindergarten children on their way to class, officials said.

Two adults -- the driver of the minibus and a
teacher at the kindergarten -- also died in the accident, said an
emergency official surnamed Fan. News of the crash ignited public anger
across China, highlighting an under-funded education system that
especially shortchanges students in remote areas.


The bus had nine seats, but Fan said it was
jammed with 62 children and two adults when it collided with the truck
in China's Gansu province, leaving the orange school vehicle crumpled
and twisted. Authorities blamed the overloading for the accident, the
official Xinhua News Agency said.
Four children and the bus driver died at the
scene, said Fan, the director of the emergency office of the Gansu
provincial work safety bureau. Gao Shaobo, head of traffic police in
Zhengning county, where the school is located, later said that 20 people
had died and 44 were still hospitalized -- two in critical condition
and 12 with serious injuries.


The impact of the crash drove the front of
the minibus back into the seats, ripped open the top and buckled the
sides of the vehicle, while the front of the truck was damaged only
slightly. Xinhua reported that the truck was loaded with coal, but Gao
told state broadcaster CCTV that it was used to transport stones but was
empty at the time of the accident.


The bus was on its way to the Little Doctor
Kindergarten on the outskirts of Qingyang city after picking up the
children -- aged 5 and 6 -- when the accident happened, Gao said. "The
van was driving on the wrong side of the street. Both the truck and the
van were going at high speeds at the time," he said. The two people in
the truck were not injured, and the driver has been detained, he said.


The bus was run by the kindergarten, Xinhua said, citing Li Yuanqing, a government press official with Zhengning county.


Such overcrowding on school buses is common
in China, and accidents happen frequently because of poorly maintained
vehicles and poor driving habits. State television aired a story in
September about a minivan with eight seats that was stopped while
carrying 64 preschoolers.


Wednesday's school bus accident appeared to
be one of the worst in China in recent years. In December, 14 children
died when their school bus plunged into a creek in heavy fog near the
central city of Hengyang. Crashes have become a feature of Chinese life
as safety habits have failed to catch up to the rapid growth in road
traffic amid the buoyant economy.


Chinese Twitter-like microblogs exploded
with public anger after Wednesday's accident, registering hundreds of
thousands of posts within hours of the news.


Many made comparisons to the quality of U.S.
school buses, some by attaching a photo purporting to show a Hummer
smashed under the rear fender of a school bus in Indianapolis. "Look at
American school buses ... Our school buses are irresponsible when it
comes to children's lives," ran the heading attached to many posts.


Beijing has made a concerted effort to
rebuild and improve a public education system that had withered with the
collapse of centrally planned socialism in the 1990s. Central
government spending on education has steadily grown in recent years,
rising a projected 16 percent this year to 296 billion yuan ($46
billion), about three-quarters of it given to local governments.


The overall figures mask great disparities,
with rural areas and small cities like Qingyang chronically short of
funds. Some local governments lack funds to pay teachers, who in
egregious cases have charged parents extra fees to teach their children
the required curriculum.


Little Doctor Kindergarten, however, falls
outside the formal school system. Privately run, the school serves
mostly children from farming families, according to the education bureau
of Zhengning county.


Qingyang and its surrounding rural areas
have seen fast, chaotic growth in recent years. The area sits amid arid
hills along the middle reaches of the Yellow River, where Chinese
civilization first flourished but which is now known for its poverty.
Rural incomes in the region average about 3,660 yuan ($570) per person,
about one-fourth the level of city dwellers. More than 120,000 rural
residents in the area lack access to clean drinking water.
Source

THis is fucked up, they need to spend the $ needed to give the schools proper equipment. Shit like this is easily avoided.

That shits sad