The driver later pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She remarried, and eventually her children married too.īut 22 years after the Carrollton crash, in 2010, her son, Charlie, was also allegedly killed as he was on his way to work by an impaired driver. She and her children, Mandy and Charlie, 11 and 9 years old respectively at the time of their father’s death, moved to Oklahoma and carried on with their lives. Kytta Hancock said that when she lost her husband in the Carrollton crash, “at the time I couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose a child.” “If it were up to me, they would quit selling alcohol and they wouldn’t allow anyone to get behind the wheel with anything ,” she said. We probably would take all the cars off the road,” Nunnallee said. “I look back in the last 30 years - 375,000 have been killed in the last 30 years, and if that had happened in a one-time incident our nation would be in a total uproar. “I honestly thought that I, Karolyn Nunnallee, would stop drunk driving. The decreases were not enough for Nunnallee, however, as she remembered having a tinge of regret when her term as MADD president was over in 1999. The number of deaths from drunk drivers has fallen sharply, from more than 18,000 alcohol-related driving fatalities in 1988 to more than 10,000 in 2016, according to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, The most notable change was the lowering of legal blood-alcohol levels, first on a state-by-state basis, then by 2004, a 0.08 blood-alcohol limit was adopted in all 50 states, according to MADD. It “spurred legislation, education, and awareness.” The biggest impact though came from "all of the attention that was paid to alcohol-impaired driving,” he said. School buses now have better-protected fuel tanks many more exits including emergency exits and windows that double as exits less flammable seat materials and wider aisles, Karol from the NTSB said. The bus was filled to capacity, Karol said, with 66 passengers and a driver, and because the front exit was inaccessible due to the crash, all 67 adults and children were trying to get out of the one rear exit.Īfter the Carrollton crash, bus safety standards were heightened and anti-drunk driving initiatives progressed. The fuel tank that is right behind that area got punctured," Karol said. The truck "hit the bus in the right front, and it was enough to basically damage the suspension, and the whole front end of the bus got pushed rearward. It was just unimaginable.”ĭon Karol, a senior highway accident investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, told ABC News that he believes that no one died as a direct result of the collision, but rather from the fire and smoke inhalation in the aftermath. “The fire was so fast, and it was so hot that Chuck actually burned to death. He was an adult, he had a wallet,” she said. “I couldn’t figure out why he would be missing. The truck was going the wrong way on an interstate highway in Kentucky and crashed into a school bus.
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