Six Hospitalized After Chain-Reaction Crash Sends Car Into Metro Bus in Reseda: Who Is Responsible in a Multi-Collision Crash?
Six people were taken to hospitals Friday morning after a three-vehicle crash in Reseda in which a car struck the back of a stopped Metro bus. As reported by ABC7, the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to Sherman Way and Etiwanda Avenue at 9:47 a.m., where seven people were evaluated and six transported, including the bus driver and a passenger in a wheelchair; the severity of the injuries was not immediately known. According to a Metro statement, the bus was stopped when it was struck on its rear left side by a vehicle that was itself involved in a separate collision. The cause remains under investigation. The crash came just three days after a car struck a Metro bus about four miles away in Chatsworth, killing two people.
The detail that defines this crash legally is the chain reaction: the vehicle that hit the bus had already been involved in another collision. When one crash causes another, California law has a framework for sorting out who answers for what — and it matters for every one of the six people now in the hospital.
Who Is Responsible When One Collision Causes Another?
In a chain-reaction crash, responsibility follows causation, not just contact. The driver whose negligence set the sequence in motion can be responsible for the foreseeable consequences of that first collision — including a second impact it propelled — even if their vehicle never touched the bus. The driver of the car that struck the bus may share responsibility, or may bear little, depending on whether they had any real ability to avoid the impact once the first collision occurred. California’s pure comparative negligence rule divides fault among everyone whose conduct contributed, in proportion to their share, and an injured person’s recovery is reduced only by their own percentage — which, for bus passengers, is typically zero.
Untangling that sequence is an evidence problem: which impact came first, at what speeds, and with what time to react. Transit buses typically carry multiple cameras, and the vehicles involved record event data — evidence that answers these questions if preserved, and disappears into repairs and salvage if not. The official accident report will assign the investigation’s conclusions, but injured people are not bound to accept an insurer’s early version of the sequence while the record is still being built.
What Should the Injured Passengers Know?
As with any crash involving a public transit agency, two things stand out. Metro, as a common carrier, owes its passengers a heightened duty of care — the utmost care and diligence for their safe carriage — though on the reported facts, the bus was stopped when struck, and the investigation’s focus is the colliding vehicles. And any claim that involves a public entity generally must begin with a formal written claim within six months under the Government Claims Act (Government Code § 911.2), a far shorter window than the general two-year statute of limitations for California personal injury claims under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. Claims against the drivers involved follow the ordinary track, and an overview of how filing a lawsuit works helps put the parallel timelines in context. Because different deadlines run against different parties from the same crash, each injured person should confirm which apply to them.
For the passenger who uses a wheelchair, there is an additional dimension: transit wheelchair positions are subject to securement systems and procedures, and whether those functioned as intended in the impact is a legitimate part of any investigation into that passenger’s injuries — not an accusation, but a question the evidence should answer.
The injured bus driver’s situation differs from the passengers’: an on-the-job injury is ordinarily covered by workers’ compensation through the employer, and that coverage exists alongside — not instead of — any claim against the third-party drivers who caused the crash. Injured transit workers often don’t realize the two systems can proceed together.
Practical Steps in the Days Ahead
Medical follow-through comes first, since injuries from a bus-impact crash — particularly for standing or seated passengers thrown by the collision — often declare themselves over days, and careful documentation protects both health and options. Keep the incident number and every record. Be measured when dealing with insurance companies: in a chain-reaction crash, at least two drivers’ insurers and a public entity’s claims process are all in motion, each with reason to point elsewhere, and early recorded statements follow a claim. Preservation of bus camera footage and vehicle data is time-sensitive and should not wait for the investigation to conclude.
Our wishes for a full recovery to all six people injured.
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