Family awarded $90M after daughter struck and killed by car
China’s roads are among the world’s most dangerous, with traffic laws and safety widely flouted, as almost 70,000 people died in road accidents in 2009, or around 190 fatalities a day, according to police statistics.
Have you ever dodged fast cars as you tried to catch your bus across the street? One family claims that their 13-year-old daughter was forced to do just that. But she wasn't riding regular public transportation: she was running after her school bus.
Ashley Davis was struck and killed by a car while she tried to catch her bus in 2009. Her family sued the Prince George’s County Board of Education and has just been awarded $90 million from a jury. That is one of the largest sums in the court's history, the Washington Post reported.
The school board is liable for the girl's death, Davis family attorneys argue, because the school bus wasn't following the correct safety policy.
More from GlobalPost: China: Hit-and-run video sparks outcry
“The school board was negligent,” John Costello, the lawyer for the family, told NBC News.
“They had adopted a policy to provide for safe transportation. The policy was they were going to pick up Ashley on her own side of the street. They never did. They forced her to cross the street. She got killed crossing the street.”
Her family is not the only one complaining: court documents viewed by the WaPo show that the system did not provide a safe bus stop for any students who live on the north side of the road where Ashley died. Parents in Prince George’s have also complained for years about late school buses and unsafe walking routes that children have to take.