School Club’s Bus Accident: Lack of Crisis Awareness Enabled Tragedy

Editorial

13:30 JST, May 12, 2026

Why did a high school student on a trip to games for his team have to lose his life? Junior high and high schools across the country, as well as bus operators, must reexamine how they ensure safety during club trips.

On the Ban-Etsu Expressway in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, a minibus carrying 20 members of the soft tennis team from Hokuetsu High School in Niigata City crashed into a guardrail. A third-year male student was thrown from the vehicle and killed, while 18 others, including the driver, suffered injuries ranging from minor to serious.

The high school’s soft tennis team is known to be a powerhouse. The school had asked a company in Niigata Prefecture to operate the bus. On the day of the accident, the team was on its way to the town of Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture, for practice matches.

After the accident, it became clear that both the school and the bus company lacked crisis awareness and were irresponsible.

The male driver, who was arrested on suspicion of negligent driving in the accident, reportedly received a request to drive via an acquaintance of a sales representative at the bus company. Not only he did not have the Class 2 driver’s license required to engage in passenger service, but he had also been involved in a series of accidents recently.

The bus itself was a rental vehicle with a white license plate for private-use vehicles, raising suspicions that the high school’s bus trip was being operated as an illegal “white bus” service in violation of the Road Transport Law.

The school claims it requested that the bus company arrange a chartered bus, but the company maintains that the school asked for an inexpensive rental bus, creating a discrepancy in their accounts. Amid this situation, which resembles a blame game, the bereaved family must feel utterly helpless.

Regardless of which side is correct, the school bears responsibility for leaving the trip entirely in the hands of the bus company without properly checking the bus and the driver. The bus company, which allowed such negligent operations to happen, naturally deserves severe criticism as well.

Club activities often involve trips for events and practice games. In rural areas with limited public transportation networks, group travel by bus is a common means of travel.

Traffic accidents during such trips have occurred in the past. Due to rising costs for chartered buses and other factors, it has become increasingly common for supervising teachers to drive the vehicles themselves. Teachers who are inexperienced behind the wheel must be made to take safe driving lessons. It is also important to carefully evaluate whether such trips are truly necessary.

School extracurricular activities are often left to the discretion of those on the scene, and principals and other school officials frequently lack detailed knowledge of the situation. In an accident in Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, in which a small boat carrying high school students on a field trip capsized, the school apologized, stating that “the supervision and management system was inadequate.”

In the latest case as well, it is said that the principal and other administrators had left all safety management for the team’s trips in the hands of the supervising teacher. It is essential to come up with systems in which multiple people check the plans and contract details.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, May 12, 2026)