Thirty-two passengers had been aboard an excursion bus in Eleuthera in the Bahamas when the vehicle overturned and injured numerous people from the Carnival Ecstasy earlier nowadays. Twenty-six people suffered accidents consistent with the information reports of the accident.
There are several motion pictures and pictures of the overturned bus on social media. However, there is a discrepancy between the news money owed and the respectable Carnival announcement regarding the number of injured guests. Carnival claims that most of the people on the bus were treated at a local clinical sanatorium and returned to the delivery.
Four to 6 cruise visitors have been airlifted from Eleuthera – one to two people were sent to a clinic in Nassau, and 3 to four to Fort Lauderdale. Fire Rescue in Broward stated that three to four sufferers who landed in Fort Lauderdale suffered severe injuries, which include limb fractures, internal injuries, and possible paralysis. In Nassau, the Tribune newspaper reports that the accidents occurred while the tour bus skidded off the street and flipped over into nearby trees.
According to the Tribune, the excursion bus was operated by Eleuthera Adventure Tours Limited, which changed into reportedly presented cruise visitors with a tour of the southern part of Eleuthera when the accident took place this morning. The Orlando Sentinel suggested that the tour was “a part of Carnival Ecstasy’s shore excursion alternatives while at the port at Princess Cays, Bahamas. Billed as the Cathedral Cove, Ocean Hole, and Rock Sound Island Tour, it’s an ecotourism excursion of Eleuthera.” (Carnival has now removed the description of the tour from its website.)
A previous Carnival visitor wrote at the reliable Carnival description of the excursion (picture on backside):
“It became a LOOOOOONG trip (1+ hour) one-way to the first prevent in a packed go back and forth bus going 80 MPH on a dusty street. Made me ill to my belly.” The newspaper said that photos of the accident circulating on social media display “skid marks and damaged branches strewn throughout the street, with the tour bus overturned in trees, lying on the pinnacle of damaged bushes and uprooted plant life.”
Eyewitness News suggests that the tour bus’s electric steering malfunctioned. There have been numerous severe tour accidents in which guests have been transported in local vehicles and buses—most of the bus tour accidents in the past concerned guests from Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises ships. In 2015, Celebrity passengers from the Celebrity Summit were killed and injured in an excursion bus accident in Tortola.
In 2012, there were two cruise excursion bus crashes in Caribbean islands, both related to Royal Caribbean passengers. Royal Caribbean cruise passengers from the Serenade of the Seas have been injured during a tour in St. Thomas. A Royal Caribbean-backed excursion tour bus crashed in St. Martin and injured passengers from the Freedom of the Seas.
In 2009, a dozen passengers from Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Summit had been severely injured while an outdoor tour car ran off the street in Dominica. We represented the passengers towards the cruise line and the excursion agency in that accident. You can examine facts at the Dominica excursion twist of fate in an editorial, “Injured Visitors to Dominica Airlifted to Miami.”
Cruise traces face felony liability while passengers are injured or killed at some stage in subsidized tours. Cruise lines have an obligation to vet the excursion corporations, warn of dangers in street situations, and ride in overseas ports of call. Cruise lines can also be held liable for negligent hiring and retention of the transportation businesses and vicarious legal responsibility based on theories of an enterprise. A key problem is whether there have been prior complaints of speedy or dangerous operation of the excursion buses for the tour.
