(CNN) — At least 10 people were injured Thursday when a private bus struck a concrete median on a highway in New Jersey, authorities said.
The bus was still stuck on the center divider in Clifton hours after the 2:30 p.m. crash, snarling traffic, said Sgt. William Frank of the Clifton Police Department.
There were 28 people — including the driver — on the DeCamp bus when a car in the center lane cut off the bus while trying to reach an exit, police said.
The two vehicles collided and the bus slammed into the highway divider. Police said at least 10 passengers were taken to area hospitals with minor injuries. The driver of the car was uninjured.
The accident comes one week after U.S. transportation officials shut down 52 bus companies in 22 states and the District of Columbia due to unsafe motor coach operations.
Although there were a number of inspections of DeCamp Bus Lines, it wasn’t one of the companies that was shut down, said Marissa Padilla, a spokeswoman for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
In November, the National Transportation Safety Board expressed concerns with the thoroughness of investigations by the FMCSA, citing four deadly crashes involving operators who were already on the radar of the oversight agency.
FMCSA officials said they re-examined the way they investigate passenger carriers to make their methods even more effective at preventing crashes.
As a result of the investigation and inspections, 52 motor coach companies were put out of business and shut down for safety violations such as failure to maintain their buses adequately, inadequate drug and alcohol driver testing and overwork of drivers.
CNN’s Chris Boyette contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire
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