A Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools bus carrying at least two students went off the road in Orange County on Wednesday morning after colliding with a commercial motor vehicle on Borland Road near Hillsborough. The North Carolina State Highway Patrol said troopers were still determining who may have been hurt as the crash remained under investigation late Wednesday morning.
The two-vehicle crash happened around 10 a.m. on Borland Road, according to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, as reported by CBS 17. Scene images showed the bus appeared to be off the road and resting in the woods following the collision. Troopers told the outlet that injuries are possible, though the full extent of who was hurt had not yet been determined.
CBS 17 reported that it had reached out to Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools for more information as the investigation continued. The collision occurred on Borland Road in Orange County.
Commercial Vehicle Enforcement
The North Carolina State Highway Patrol's Commercial Vehicle Enforcement section describes efforts to increase the frequency of driver and vehicle inspections, as well as vehicle and weight enforcement, according to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol.
School bus passengers on large buses like the one involved in Wednesday's crash are generally not required to wear seat belts. Large school buses in North Carolina are legally exempt from seat belt requirements under state child passenger safety laws, relying instead on federal “compartmentalization” design standards built around high-backed, padded, impact-absorbing seats, per BuckleUpNC.
Bus Crashes Are Common, But Remain Rare Relative to Ridership
North Carolina recorded 1,125 school bus crashes in 2024, which resulted in 258 injuries and three fatalities statewide, according to data compiled by Maginnis Howard.
Those numbers represent a tiny fraction of the system's overall scale. More than 14,100 school buses transport nearly 800,000 students over 181 million miles across North Carolina in a typical school year, according to the North Carolina Department of Insurance. Research from the UNC Highway Safety Research Center has found that school bus travel maintains the lowest per-trip student injury rate among all commute modes, making it roughly 20 times safer than riding with teen drivers.
It remains unclear under what circumstances Wednesday's collision occurred or whether either driver is suspected of a traffic violation.
District Already Navigating Budget and Enrollment Pressures
For 2026–27, Public School Review lists Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools as having 11,353 students across 20 public schools.
No further details on injuries or the cause of the crash had been released as of Wednesday morning. The investigation into the Borland Road collision remains ongoing.
