Multiple school buses involved in weather-related accidents Tuesday

PROVIDENCE, RI – Messy roads lead to a number of accidents in Rhode Island Tuesday, after snow started accumulating around 1pm. Rhode Island State Police reported responding to 55 accidents throughout the day, while commuters spent time sitting in traffic.

On Smart Street in Providence, a Times Squared Academy school bus was hit by a jeep and left stuck on top of a hill. Thirty-seven students sat inside the bus for hours, but luckily no one was injured.

"It’s horrible, I’m glad no one was hurt. But it didn’t surprise me to see such a big vehicle get stuck on this hill," said Danial Harvey of Providence.

Just after 3pm another school bus got into an accident at the corner of Amherst and Pope Street.  Three students were taken to the hospital as a precaution.

Earlier in the evening, ABC6 News spoke with members of RIDOT about their snow preparations.

"This makes it a tricky storm just because of the timing of it," Joe Bucci, from Rhode Island Department of Transportation

RIDOT spent most of the morning Tuesday pre-treating the roads with magnesium chloride to assist in eliminating  the snow from sticking to the highway.
as soon as the snow began shortly after 1 p.m., the DOT began deploying their vehicles.

"We have 118 state trucks, and we have up to 400 vendor trucks if needed."

The states goal is to have all roadways they’re responsible for clear curb to curb, in order to do that they’re asking drivers to follow some rules of thumb.

"As always just drive slow, give us room, people tend to be in a hurry everybody wants to get home, so drivers need to be more aware and motorists need to be aware of the plows, I say it all the time, don’t crowd the plow."