“But you were going faster than that,” said the superintendent of schools.

Dar nodded. “I manually shifted from second gear into third gear and then to fourth,” said Dar.

“But the driver said that she shifted down,” said the president of the School Board.

Dar nodded. “I know. But she didn’t. When we inspected the transmission after the accident, it was locked in fourth gear. The Alison automatic transmission is programmed to automatically shift down in the event of such sudden acceleration. The driver overrode the automatic transmission and shifted into fourth gear.”

The crowd stared at him.

“The road marks here showed five hundred and fifty feet of striated, curved tire marks on the day of the accident,” he said, pointing. The marks were still visible. All eyes followed his pointing finger. “The automatic braking system, although degraded by loss of air pressure due to overheating, was still trying to stop the bus when it hit the guardrail up there.” Everyone turned to see the bent and battered guardrail. “The bus was going sixty-four miles per hour when it contacted the guardrail,” said Dar. “It was doing approximately forty-eight miles per hour when it left the road and became airborne about here.”

All heads turned back.

“The bus was in fourth gear when it hit the guardrail because the driver had selected that gear,” said Dar, “not because the transmission had failed or automatically upshifted. She was in a panic. After burning out the brakes, ignoring the burning brake odor and the unusual handling of the bus going uphill, then after ignoring the brake-pressure warning light and deciding to continue down the steep grade despite the fact that the brakes felt ‘weird and mushy’ at the top of the pass, the driver overrode the automatic transmission at approximately twenty-eight miles per hour and shifted into fourth gear by mistake.”