BOWLING GREEN, Va. A bus operated by a discount company with a particularly poor record of fatigued driving overturned on a Virginia highway before dawn Tuesday, killing four people and injuring more than 50 others.
The driver was charged with reckless driving, and police said fatigue was a factor. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
The SkyExpress bus swerved off northbound Interstate 95, hit an embankment and flipped just before 5 a.m. about 30 miles north of Richmond. Fifty-four people were taken to area hospitals and treated for minor to severe injuries.
The bus left Greensboro, N.C., on Monday night and was headed to Chinatown in New York City with 59 people aboard. The driver, Kin Yiu Cheung , 37, of Flushing, N.Y., was being held in an area jail on $3,000 bond.
"This is the first serious accident" involving SkyExpress buses, the company said in a statement released through its media liaison, Gail Parenteau . "The bus driver has never before been involved in an accident."
Many bus operators eschew terminals to offer cheap East Coast fares, providing convenient routes and in some cases free wireless Internet. Recent fatal accidents have prompted calls for tougher regulation.
In a March crash, a speeding bus operated by another company toppled off an elevated highway in New York and hit a utility pole, peeling off the roof, as it was returning to Chinatown from a Connecticut casino . Fifteen passengers were killed and 18 injured.
Charlotte, N.C.-based SkyExpress, which offers $30 trips from New York City to several Southern cities, had 46 violations for driver fatigue since 2009, three of them serious, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration says.
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