Icy roads and foggy conditions played havoc with Friday-morning commuters, including a school bus in Box Elder County.
Weber and Davis school districts postponed starting schools for two hours to give maintenance crews time to put salt and sand on parking lots and sidewalks, officials said.
At 8:41 a.m. Friday, a school bus with 30 students aboard en route to Century Elementary School was involved in a head-on collision with a 2-ton farm truck at 6200 W. 2400 North, just west of Corinne, said Box Elder Sheriff Chief Deputy Kevin Potter.
Box Elder Superintendent Ron Wolff said three elementary-age children were taken to local hospitals to be treated for minor injuries.
“One student had a cut on the forehead, another student complained of a sore neck, and another student complained of a sore wrist,” he said.
Students were taken to nearby home, where parents were notified and told they could either come to the home to get their child or they could pick up their child at the school, Potter said.
Wolff said the principal at the school visited classrooms to talk to students about the accident because some students who were not on the bus were upset.
Potter said the two-lane road was covered with snow, so no lane markings were visible in the heavy fog. Both the bus and the farm truck were driving toward the center of the road because of the foggy conditions.
Citations are pending the completion of the investigation, Potter said.
Davis School District delayed opening schools for two hours “because Thursday afternoon was really dicey,” said Christopher Williams, district spokesman.
“It’s one thing to get the students to school; it’s another to get them across the parking lots into the school,” he said.
Williams said the district received a lot of calls Thursday afternoon from parents, teachers and students who fell because of the icy conditions in parking lots and sidewalks.
In Morgan, a school bus slid off a subdivision road Friday morning, said Morgan School District Superintendent Ken Adams. Parents tried to transport students using their own vehicles and could not make it out of the subdivision.
Weber County Sheriff’s Lt. Mark Lowther said slide-offs and accidents still occurred Friday morning, but not as many as Thursday.
Many drivers involved in slide-offs Thursday had to abandon their vehicles until Friday because it was “too treacherous” to pull them out Thursday, Lowther said.
One motorist Thursday night hit a Weber County deputy’s vehicle and then hit a Utah Highway Patrol trooper’s vehicle at 250 N. 1900 West, Lowther said.
Both the deputy and the trooper were responding to a slide-off and had parked on the shoulder with their emergency lights on. The motorist who hit the vehicles was traveling north at 56 mph on the icy road and hit the rear of the deputy’s truck, then bounced off and hit the trooper’s Dodge Charger.
No one was injured, and Harrisville police investigated the accident.
Lowther said a rock slide Thursday night on the North Ogden Divide caused the road to be closed for a while, but crews cleared it and the road was open Friday.
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