A bus driver was killed early Friday when a 2007 Prevost motorcoach hit the back of a disabled tractor-trailer on Interstate 20 East near mile marker 70, the South Carolina Highway Patrol said.
The wreck happened just before 6 a.m. in Columbia, S.C., and left no one else injured. Troopers said the tractor-trailer had broken down and was already disabled on the interstate before the motorcoach struck it.
That detail is the part that sharpens the crash into more than a routine highway collision: the truck was sitting on the road after it failed, but no one was inside it when the bus hit. The driver of the motorcoach died at the scene, and investigators have not identified that person.
The sequence points to a fatal impact on a major route at the start of the morning commute, with a stranded tractor-trailer and a passenger-style bus meeting in the dark before sunrise. What remains unanswered is who the driver was and what led the motorcoach into the disabled trailer on I-20 East.
