Eight people were taken to local hospitals after a crash in Council Bluffs Thursday afternoon. Officer Jason Bailey says it happened at a highway intersection on the south side of town a little before two P.M. A semi collided with a Southwest Iowa Transport bus carrying elderly residents home after a function they’d been attending. The officer says both witnesses and the semi driver himself tell police the truck driver failed to stop in time at a red light, started to slide, lost control, and hit the bus. Eight people in all were taken to hospitals, though none seemed to have life threatening injuries. Officer Bailey says the big rig jacknifed when the driver hit the brakes, and that may have made the crash less serious than it might have been. He says the vehicles “kind of hit sideways” and that dissipated the force of the crash. He says if the semi hadn’t jacknifed, the rig probably would have hit the van’s passenger area directly.
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