Most Montgomery, Fairfax bus collisions were preventable last year

Most of the collisions that Montgomery and Fairfax County buses were involved in during fiscal 2011 could have been prevented, data shows. However, Montgomery’s Ride-On buses had significantly more collisions — defined as any encounter between a bus and another vehicle, a person or an object — than the Connector system, even after factoring in their size differences.

According to data from Montgomery County, Ride-On buses had 526 collisions in fiscal 2011, 288 of which — or 55 percent — were “preventable,” meaning the driver was at least partly to blame for the crash. Of the 193 collisions in Fairfax during the same period, 55 percent were also listed as preventable.