North Yorkshire bus driver jailed
Graham Jones drove his bus into floodwater, stranding 23 schoolchildren.
A bus driver from North Yorkshire has been jailed for a year for driving his bus into floodwaters - stranding 23 schoolchildren.
It happened near Newton-on-Ouse in January.
Graham Jones, 43, has been found guilty at York Crown Court of dangerous driving, jailed for 12 months and disqualified from driving for three years.
He'd told York Crown Court he made a genuine mistake'' when he was driving the children, aged between 11 and 18, to Easingwold School, in North Yorkshire, and realised the floodwater he was going through was coming in through the side door of his bus.
Jones, from Linton-on-Ouse, said he put the vehicle in reverse but the bus began to move sideways until it got stuck in a roadside ditch.
He said both he and the children were traumatised by what happened as firefighters had to wade thigh-deep into the water to carry everyone on board to safety.
Jones said some of the teenagers broke a window as he tried to reassure them and urged them to stay on the vehicle until help arrived.
Giving evidence in his trial, the former Army driver confirmed he had already driven through one stretch of flooded Tollerton Lane, near the village of Newton-on-Ouse, near York, when he attempted to cross a second waterlogged section.
But he denied that his actions on January 5 amounted to dangerous driving because he did not think the water was deep enough to cause him any problems.
Video shot from the passenger seat of a police Land Rover showed the scene as the vehicle went through one flooded road section and stopped at the inundated second section.
But Jones told the jury the water was not as deep when he took the decision to drive into the water three hours before, on the first day of the school term.
And he said he only saw one of the two closed road signs visible on the video, saying he thought they referred to a bridge closure he was aware of further up on Tollerton Lane and not the section he was on.
Jones said: It was a genuine mistake.''
He said: I did not put the children's lives in danger. No, I did not class it as dangerous.''
Graham O'Sullivan, prosecuting, told the jury on Thursday: It is clear that someone who is driving in that way, risking the safety of his passengers and himself, is driving dangerously.''
Judge Paul Batty QC said the incident happened after floods of biblical proportions'' had affected the York area.