The packages, to casinos in Connecticut and Atlantic City, are priced to sell. Vouchers for free food and turns at the slot machine, usually provided by the casinos, can completely offset the low price of the trip, which often begins on a Chinatown sidewalk in the afternoon and ends hours later when the same driver returns to Manhattan near the break of dawn.
It was one such
The wrecked bus carried the logo of World Wide Tours, based in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The accident is the company’s fourth recorded crash in as many years, federal records show. Representatives at World Wide Travel, apparently the parent company, would not answer questions on Saturday. In a statement, the company’s owners said they were “heartbroken” and pledged to cooperate with investigators.
Each passenger on the crashed bus paid $15 for a ticket, according to Matthew Yu, owner of the Chinatown-based ticket agency that coordinated sales for the trip. The bus most likely left Manhattan at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Mr. Yu said, and would have started its return trip from Mohegan Sun about 3:45 a.m.
A sign outside Mr. Yu’s office advertises the Mohegan Sun bus trip with Chinese characters that translate roughly as “Go with the wind, be prosperous.”
“Life is fragile,” Mr. Yu said, struggling to keep back tears. “It was supposed to be a happy trip.” He added that ticket sales had dropped on Saturday: “The whole day, it’s been slow.”
As recently as late February, federal regulators had flagged World Wide Travel for a higher-than-average number of crashes and several cases of driver fatigue. The company was given 35 violations for various mechanical and driver safety problems in the past year, records show.
A bus operated by the company was involved in a collision last year in Perth Amboy, N.J., that resulted in at least one injury; another collision, also causing an injury, was recorded in Westchester County in 2009, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
The driver of the crashed bus, Ophadell Williams, was hospitalized on Saturday with chest pains and a fractured hip. He told the authorities that he believed a tractor-trailer cut him off and clipped the front of the bus.
His wife, Holly Williams, said her husband is a veteran driver who makes the casino route daily and has worked for World Wide Travel for six months.
An all-night excursion — for gamblers and bus drivers alike — is almost always part of the casino package offered by bus operators in the region. Academy Bus, based in Hoboken, N.J., advertises a round trip that leaves the Bronx at 8:45 p.m. and arrives at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut by 11:15 p.m.
Six hours later, passengers reboard as late as 5:15 a.m. The fare: $24, including a $15 food voucher and $15 of slots play.
“It doesn’t surprise me that they would be on the road at 5 in the morning,” said Marvin Steinberg, executive director of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling, an occasional consultant to Foxwoods. He said he had seen buses coming and going from the Mohegan Sun casino at all hours, prompting concerns about driver fatigue.
“I don’t know whether that bus driver slept while folks gambled, or didn’t sleep at all,” he said.
In interviews, discount bus drivers said they often try to sneak in naps — sometimes curling up in an empty seat — while their passengers gamble.
Marvin Ha, 45, of Brooklyn, a driver for the Sky Express bus lines, was picking up Foxwoods-bound passengers on the Bowery on Saturday afternoon. He said he stays alert on late-night trips with soda, tea, and the Parliament cigarettes he keeps tucked in the dashboard.
“Tractor-trailers are our biggest problem,” Mr. Ha said. “When the rear of the truck slides toward you, you have to stay calm because if you steer too hard to avoid it, you might flip.”
Anthony J. Emanuel, a lawyer in Garden City, N.Y., once represented a passenger who was injured on a World Wide Travel bus in 2009 during a late-night return trip from Atlantic City. Drivers on those trips, Mr. Emanuel said, are often overworked.
“It’s a long day,” Mr. Emanuel said. The drivers “are up 20, 22 hours; you’re not surprised sometimes to see that.”
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