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The highway can be a dangerous place and you never know when tragedy will strike.  Here are some of the most tragic auto accidents that have occurred over the past few decades in the United States:

In May 1999, a bus driving down Interstate 610, traveling from LaPlace, Louisiana to Bay St Louis, Mississippi careened across the road, through a fence and then slammed into a concrete divider wall.  The driver of the bus was seriously injured, while 22 passengers were killed.  In addition, 24 more passengers were injured, 18 of them were placed in critical condition.
In December 1991, a 100-mile stretch of Interstate 5 in California was closed due to a 104-car pileup, consisting of 93 passenger vehicles and 11 tractor-trailers.  The horrendous accident resulted in 17 deaths and 150 injured.  Police and rescue workers reported that several vehicles had exploded, while others had caught fire and burned on the roadway.
In August 1991, tragedy struck as 60 Girl Scouts traveled by bus through California.  The bus lost its braking ability while driving down a narrow roadway, overturning and tumbling down a mountainside.  Seven of the Girl Scouts were killed during the accident, while dozens were injured to some degree (several were placed in critical condition).
In December 1990, nearly 100 vehicles were involved in a multi-car pileup, chain reaction event near Calhoun, Tennessee.  Thick, heavy fog is blamed for this terrible accident that snarled both lanes of I-75, leading to 12 deaths and 42 serious injuries.  Several tractor-trailers burned, as well as numerous consumer vehicles.
In May 1986, a bus traveling down Route 395 in California (outside Walker, CA) was involved in a single vehicle accident that claimed the lives of 21 passengers and injured 20 others, including the driver.  The bus driver lost control of the vehicle, with the bus crossing the center line twice, before striking a retaining wall before overturning in the nearby river.
In June 1980, a passenger bus carrying 32 passengers through Arkansas was involved in a single vehicle accident on Route 7.  According to authorities, the bus driver lost control of the vehicle, as well as braking capacity, resulting in the bus overturning, skidding and jumping the embankment before coming to a rest.  Twenty were killed and 13 injured as a result.
In May 1980, a freighter (the Summit Venture) collided with a supporting pier of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge during stormy weather.  As a result of the collision, the entire southbound span of the bridge was demolished.  Six passenger vehicles and a Greyhound bus were on the span at the time, plummeting to the waters below.  35 people were killed and only 1 person survived the fall.
In March 1972, 5 students were killed and 44 others were injured when their school bus was struck by a freight train, traveling from Penn Central Station in New York, outside of Clarkstown.  The school bus was torn in half by the impact, with one-half coming to rest 1,000 feet from the point of impact.  Of the 44 survivors, several required extensive surgery and even prosthetic limbs.
In May 1988, a drunk driver struck a church bus head-on.  The driver was driving the wrong way on an interstate highway.  Immediately after the crash, the bus’s fuel tank ruptured and the fuel ignited.  Twenty-seven aboard the bus were killed and 34 were seriously injured in the auto accident.
In February 2001, Washington DC was the site of a 116-vehicle pileup that resulted in 1 death and dozens of serious injuries.  A serious snowstorm and very limited visibility were blamed as the initial cause of the catastrophic accident that stretched for 3 miles down I-95 outside the nation’s capital.