“If he would have hit me head-on, I probably wouldn’t have survived.”
“He started to come over the line a little bit,” Brian Lathrop was on duty in his Central Minnesota school bus, driving Highway 169’s busy two-lane when he clocked a nightmare scenario in front of him. An approaching semi-truck didn’t seem to be staying in the correct lane. After an initial wobble, the trailer seemed to go back to his side. “Then all of sudden he just veered to the left and was heading straight for me.”
School bus driver makes a split-second decision that saved lives
The bus had children ranging in age from kindergarten to seventh grade on board.
Lathrop acted quickly, steering the bus into the oncoming lane just as the semi-truck entered the path he had been traveling.
The vehicles narrowly missed colliding head-on. Due to Lathrop’s agile maneuvering, the semi grazed the right rear side of the school bus.
Thankfully, the oncoming lane was clear the very moment the bus jumped to the left. Lathrop, aware of the vehicles ahead of him, immediately pulled the bus over to the righthand shoulder.
Two students suffered minor injuries. Several adult paraprofessionals were on board and immediately went to their aid.
Without the bus driver’s fast response, the results would have been much worse.
“I don’t feel that I’m a hero.”
Lathrop said he was just doing his job, which, to him, includes “trying to protect as many lives as I could.”
The local school board will formally recognize Lathrop at their next gathering.
