An inquest has heard that Jessica Baker, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, who died when her school bus crashed on a motorway, was one of the few passengers wearing a seatbelt. She was dressed for a morning PE class at West Kirby grammar school in Wirral, Merseyside, when the coach crashed on the northbound M53 just after 8 am on 29 September last year. The crash killed the bus driver, Stephen Shrimpton, and Jessica.
The senior coroner for Liverpool and Wirral, André Rebello, said in court that the CCTV footage showed several children on the bus were “unrestrained” at the time of the accident. Jessica, however, was sitting in place “not moving in the same way everyone else is moving”. After the incident, a postmortem revealed that she had bruising consistent with wearing a seatbelt.
Rebello issued a prevention of future deaths report after the inquest was opened in October last year. He raised concerns about the use of seatbelts as the CCTV did not show they were being used, and in the report, he suggested that “a distinction should be drawn between school buses in built-up areas and school commuter coaches travelling a distance using A-roads and the motorway network with regard to the availability and use of seatbelts.”
About 50 pupils, travelling to West Kirby and Calday Grange grammar schools, were aboard the coach when the accident took place. The CCTV footage showed Shrimpton, who was not wearing a seatbelt, slump to his left side before the vehicle left the motorway. The coach then went up an embankment, hitting a tree, before rolling back on to the hard shoulder of the motorway.
Jessica’s cause of death was a head injury, and Rebello recorded a conclusion of road traffic collision. No inquest was held into Shrimpton’s death, as Rebello confirmed the cause of his death was owing to natural causes. After the crash, four other children were taken to hospital, including a 14-year-old boy whose injuries were said to be “life-changing”
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