By Conrad Dudderar
Associate Editor
A school bus driver’s failure to yield caused a recent crash that catapulted a minivan into a concrete embankment under a Yukon highway overpass.
Lunch-hour traffic was narrowed to one lane on northbound Garth Brooks Boulevard after the two-vehicle, one-injury traffic collision at 11:55 a.m. April 19 at eastbound Interstate 40.
The cause of the crash is detailed in an Oklahoma official collision report signed by YPD investigating officer Jonathan May.
A 2011 Blue Bird bus owned by Reydon Public Schools was southbound on Garth Brooks Boulevard entering the turn lane at the intersection of the entrance ramp for eastbound I-40.
The school bus had an unprotected green light that the driver, Reydon’s Linda R. Hancock, 43, mistakenly believed was clear to proceed with a turn through the intersection.
A 2020 Honda Odyssey, driven by a 73-year-old El Reno woman, was traveling northbound in the inside lane of Garth Brooks Boulevard and had a green light.
The school bus struck the minivan during its turn with the bus’s front to the minivan’s front.
After the collision, the minivan left the roadway and continued north through the grass before coming to a rest against a bridge support and attenuator on the east side of Garth Brooks Boulevard.
The minivan driver was removed from her vehicle by emergency medical personnel with complaints of a torso injury and taken by a Pafford EMS ambulance to OU Medical Center.
The school bus driver admitted the crash was her fault “for not recognizing unprotected green light versus green arrow,” according to the collision report.
Hancock’s failure to yield from a signal light was the primary “contributing factor” in the April 19th traffic collision, the report show.
Twelve passengers on the school bus – 10 teenagers and two adults – were not injured.
The Honda Odyssey sustained disabling damage and was removed from the scene by A-Z Towing.
