{"id":917033,"date":"2026-07-06T20:10:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T20:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/917033\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T20:10:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T20:10:47","slug":"tour-bus-driver-in-deadly-state-thruway-crash-pleads-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/917033\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour bus driver in deadly State Thruway crash pleads guilty"},"content":{"rendered":"

The driver of a tour bus that crashed on the New York State Thruway in Genesee County last year,<\/a> killing five people, pleaded guilty to charges Monday related to the crash.<\/p>\n

Bin Shao, of\u00a0Queens, pleaded guilty to five counts of criminally negligent homicide, all felonies. This is a reversal from March when he pleaded not guilty to those charges<\/a>. The five counts of second-degree manslaughter were dropped Monday.<\/p>\n

Shao was driving the bus when it crashed on Aug. 22, 2025 on the Thruway near Pembroke with 54 people on board. Police say the bus veered out of the lane, crossed into traffic and then rolled off the road.\u00a0The bus was traveling east on Interstate 90 from Niagara Falls to New York City.\u00a0Multiple passengers were ejected, dozens taken to area hospitals and five people were declared dead at the scene.<\/p>\n

Police say there was no evidence Shao,\u00a0a naturalized citizen from China, was impaired or under the influence and that the bus showed no mechanical failure.\u00a0Documents released in June<\/a> revealed that during an interview with the National Transportation Safety Board, Shao told investigators a non-empty water bottle rolled to his foot at the front of the bus. He then went on to say he bent down to pick it up and throw it away, but it bounced out of the trashcan. That’s when he lost control of the bus.<\/p>\n

Those same documents said eight passengers who were interviewed said the driver did not do a pre-trip safety briefing. One said they thought they were told about emergency exit windows at the start of the trip but not how to open them and seat belts were not mentioned.<\/p>\n

The NTSB also revealed there were only 59 seat belts for the 61 passenger seats on the bus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shao faces a maximum sentence of one-and-one-third year to four years in prison for the criminally negligent homicide charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The driver of a tour bus that crashed on the New York State Thruway in Genesee County last…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":917034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,12170,17546,405,403,17050,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,5292,879,13570,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-917033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-app-public-safety","tag-buffalo","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-state","tag-news","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-public-safety","tag-rochester","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116874852893356424","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}