2 Students Hospitalized In School Bus Crash In Bergen County: Police

GLEN ROCK, NJ — Two students were hospitalized, and an aide was injured, after a school bus collided with an SUV and careened into a utility pole early Tuesday at a Glen Rock intersection, police Chief Dean Ackermann said.

As the school bus, owned by Pro-Trans School Transportation out of Hackensack, was taking students to a Bergen County Special Services facility in Paramus, the driver apparently failed to yield at the crossing of Highwood and Maple Avenues, Ackermann said.

A witness reported that the driver, later identified as a 71-year-old Paterson man, was driving east on Highwood when he pulled into the path of a Honda Pilot that was going north on Maple resulting in the crash. The bus then hit a utility pole at the corner of Maple and Park Avenues, police said.

Both of the students, who were afraid to get into an ambulance and were taken by parents and a school counselor to the hospital, sustained non-life-threatening injuries. The aide and the driver of the Honda, a 39-year-old Hawthorne woman, were also injured in the 9:39 a.m. crash, and were treated on scene.

An officer issued a summons to the bus driver for failure to yield right-of-way. The crash is under investigation by the state Motor Vehicle Commission.