The C.R. England driver training school in Fontana, CA trains new drivers at their facility, but houses them elsewhere. Every day, the trainees are picked up by a passenger van to drive them to the training facility, but on Thursday morning, the passenger van crashed off the freeway into a tree and rolled into a drainage ditch, killing one person and injuring several others.
According to the California Highway Patrol, the crash occurred just after 5:30 am when the driver braked and swerved to the right, lost control, and crossed a lane before colliding with a tree and rolling into a drainage ditch.
It is not known what caused the driver to swerve and lose control, but authorities did say that there were no other vehicles involved in the accident.
It has been reported that many of the passengers were not wearing seat belts and nine of the passengers were admitted to a local hospital with serious to moderate injuries. The passenger who was killed was partially ejected out a side window and declared dead at the scene.
UPDATE 2: other news outlets are reporting that there were only 10 passengers in the van, not the 16 that were originally reported by Los Angeles Times and subsequently reposted here.
It has been less than a day since the accident and many details are not yet known, but the California Highway Patrol will be investigating the cause of the crash.
Next Story: FedEx Truck Collides With Bus, Killing 10, Injuring Dozens More
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Not unbelieveable at all. We’re looked at like Cattle for taxes to our government…..”meat” to companies; whether educated or not….and our country is dying due to chasing money.
No truck company is better than another…..trucker’s haven’t gotten effective raises since the 70’s,
there are more trucks on the road than ever before for obvious reasons,…..and more are coming…
With today’s employment record of moving jobs overseas….is there any wonder why so many men…and women now need to do this crappy work?
But still they come….As long as drivers keep comming…Why should they change?
In my opinion, this is gross negligence on England’s part. Total disregard for the safety of the students if this van was overloaded. But then, it is not surprising. It is the CR England way. Profits first, EVERYTHING else secondary.
You are wrong I work for England all companies are what you make of them. We give people a chance for a better life. Some are rescued from bad situations and need to change their surroundings to be better for society.
Exploitation of the unfortunate and unskilled is unspeakably bad karma.
I’ll agree with that. I worked for england for three years it was a good gig for the most part and I’ve sent several people their way.
I tell them if your looking for easy work with steady hrs trucking is not for you.
Trucking is hard thankless work but if you can figure it out it’s a good way to pay the bills only the bills.
Trucking pays horrible but I’d you work 65-70 hrsxa week you can make a living.
C R England I guess is speechless. Not very diplomatic with condolences or regrets. My sympathy to the driver that died and those hurt in this strange accident. I hope after 2 years that you find a better job.
They can’t express condolence or regret. There are lawsuits coming.
Uh-huh, sure.
You’d be the first person to say they weren’t sincere.
That would be the smaller version as yiu correctly updated. The 15 passanger version has another window just past the first two which is only abkut a foot wide. My father had one for several years. Poor mans rv lol
I have a friend who just finished the CR Ripoff training in Fontana. She tells me that England has 2 vans used in transporting the students back and forth and between them there are quite a few broken, non-functioning seatbelts. She says it’s also likely that the van was overloaded at the time. About what i would expect from this company. And yes, as a 20 year veteran i did my best to talk her out of choosing England. Never pulled for them but have heard nothing but bad.
My heart and prayers go out to all those involved. I hope these training companies are reeled in some day.
How sad! My husband was on that same exact van (as well as the white one that they had) a little over 2 mos. ago. He had said that on that van all the seat belts weren’t working and the seats would rock back and forth…Prayers to all the people injured as well as their families…what a tragedy!
For years I’ve been complaining about companies, now chickings comming home to roast, for those who got hurt my heart go’s out to you and family member’s.
It astounds me that CR England can actually get people to drive for them…especially after more than 30 years of lawsuites and well documented abuses of their drivers through their lease program.
I hope they get sued right out of business and the owners lose everything they’ve got and also are not allowed to open another company!!!!
Going out of business will hurt their employees much more than the owners. The people making those types of decisions (packing 16 people in 1 van) need to have criminal charges brought against them and replaced with people that can make better judgement calls. There are probably many people in management that should share blame for it, but the majority of the people who work there do not derseve to lose their jobs for this. Saying that you hope the get sue out of business is pretty ignorant.
I would rather lose my job than my life. Our industry would do better without C.R.England hiring cheap labor and throwing safety to the wind.
That’s why people that make unsafe decisions need to go. If they cannot make safe decisions, then I agree, the company needs to go. Someone should have said, “I’d rather make 2 trips than overload a van.” Was that the choice of the whole company, or a few people in the company? If we closed every company that had an accident because someone made a bad call, we’d all be all out of work. I work for a vey safety conscience company, but I have seen bad people come and go, drivers and management. I glad they were weeded out before something bad happened, but the fact is that something bad could have happened while they were here.
We recently fired a driver for running on a flat tire for over 300 miles. Security cams where he parked clearly showed a flat tire (off the bead) when he started his trip and he clearly did not do the pre-trip that he signed off on. It only clost us 2 tires, but could have cost a life. He’s gone, but before we found that flat tire, he could have caused and accident, would I be at fault? Many people on here would think that the driver deserves a second chance since since he had no previous issues, but those same poeple would also put us out of business with a lawsuit if they got hurt by an accident and found that evidence.
The point is, could we have been a bad company that deserves to be put out of business if he got in an accident and killed someone? Are we a bad company for firing a driver for 1 issue when drivers are told it only takes 1 safety issue? I think we did the right thing, we found a person who made unsafe decisions and fired him. Luckily in our case, it was before someone got hurt. Is C.R. England in the same boat? I don’t know, you need to look at the history of the people who made that decision and see if C.R. England should have acted sooner.
Condolences to the family and friends.
This is both a very sad and unfortunate accident and I too send prayers out to the family and friends of those killed and injured. I attended the CRE school in Burns Harbor not too long ago, and they normally packed us into either a school bus or a 15-passenger van… and the drivers often chatted on their cell phones all the way between the school and the motel. It’s time for these “training schools” to clean up their act!
I went to this school, and used their vans two months ago. Though I don’t recall using this nice, new looking van. We used far worse looking white vans. Which the only seat belt working was the drivers. Also in one of them, the back seat would jolt forward when the van braked. What sucks is they pick random trainees, to drive the other trainees to the school every morning, not even knowing if they can handle driving something as simple as the van… and trust me, there were some harrowing moments with some of these “drivers” they picked.
Any driver knows that we are cannon fodder on the front lines of these major multi million dollar companies.. why should they care if they kill you or a fellow driver. Woe we lost 10 guys. Good thing we r shipping in 150 fresh recruits to driver orientation every Sunday. Safety first gentlemen always be the smartest most safety conscious person in the room…
CR England is not alone in this truly deplorable corporate behavior. It is so thoroughly ironic that their driver training program preaches SAFETY all day long, but they will grossly overload their passenger vans to carry students back and forth to classes and do it day after day after day. It is a miracle this has not happened many more times. I signed on with Stevens Transport’s driver training program in Dallas, TX and it was the exact same scenario there too. Their student van was always overloaded. Some of us frequently sat crowded into what ever available space there was on the floor. Only the driver’s seat-belt fastened securely. The passenger seating was never securely bolted anywhere. The idiot behind the wheel drove like a blind madman in a demolition derby. It was very exciting.
I went through England’s Fontana school 2 years ago. I did just under 2 years with england and I’m now with Conway truckload. I can say that the vans were always overloaded and they would have the students driving them. I know one day the student driving us back to the hotel was going 90 mph down I10 and almost rear ended multiple cars. That was the last day in the van for me. I just called a taxi everyday after that.
16 is a crock. Those van’s can’t hold that many. I can see other companies now: We are no longer allowing drivers to use courtesy cars due to the dangers.
now, there may be a lot of negative out there about england but from my personal experience there a few years back, they aren’t a half bad company to drive for. now, this was an unfortunate ACCIDENT sending prayers for the family of the deceased and those injured.
I am less than impressed with this Company. I am a former Owner/Operator. I was treated like garbage by them. While in their student hotel. I was awakened by by complete strangers in my room. No less than ten men were running in and out of my room with others gawking at my sleeping form. The door was left wide open and students were packed at the door making comments about my body. I would not work for them if the gave be a brand new Volvo 880 with a Detroit 600. Total trainer truck with a 10k per student bonus. Not even if they threw in an Green A.P.U. unit.
I used to drive for Stevens Transport and they did the same thing transporting students to and from a horrible hotel! Almost all of those vans have no seatbelts at all or they don’t work! I have driven those vans while stuck on the yard in Dallas! The only credit I will give Stevens is that you had to be a driver in order to drive those vehicles to begin with and be cleared from the clinic! I didn’t make any money while I drove for them and that’s the reason I no longer drive for them but I am glad I never went to CR England as I have never heard anything good about them and their drivers are the worst I have seen!
You know it’s funny how people are so quick to point fingers and assign blame when anything goes wrong. The fact that the people involved were in England’s training program is totally irrelevant. Looks to me like the fault lies with the driver of the van for swerving to miss something that wasn’t there. How many of you self-appointed experts were at the scene and can say exactly what happened or why? I hope maybe you will re-examine your criticisms and see how much you really know about ANY carrier.
I really hope they fix these issues because it should not have taken my grandfathers death for them to realize that those vans are faulty. It breaks my heart reading this knowing my grandpa died this way.
Bruce was a good man! I sat there and talked to him before I went outside to line up for this van I was a second away from getting on this exact van. Luckily I was offered a ride. It sucks really bad that He had to pass away! I’m still sorry for your loss. I still remember him til this day.