Another STA bus crashes in the Cheney area. What’s behind the jump in incidents?

A Spokane Transit Authority bus missed its turn on a Cheney route Friday afternoon and got stuck in an apparent attempt to make a U-turn on a two lane road.

There were no injuries, STA spokeswoman Carly Cortright said, but the rest of the Salnave Road incident is still under investigation.

Accidents as a whole are unavoidable, but Cortright said that STA sets goals to keep the number that the fleet is responsible for as low as possible. In 2021, there were 53 STA-preventable accidents, and this hit the agency’s goal for the year. In 2022, there were 112 and in 2023, 131.

STA is not entirely sure of the reasoning for the sudden jump in preventable crashes, Cortright said. Some hypotheses include a hiring boom in 2022 as STA was preparing for the new City Line route and a general increase in accident rates immediately following the coronavirus pandemic, the latter of which has also been documented by the American Automobile Association.

Starting in 2024, Cortright said, the transit authority changed its training protocol and saw a drop in at-fault collisions to 120 despite maintaining more driving hours, and then further down to 109 in 2025. More than 80% of those 109 were minor collisions with no injuries and less than $4,000 in damage.

There have been at least seven accidents involving STA vehicles in 2026 so far, including a double decker bus colliding with a viaduct in downtown Spokane due in part to faulty mapping software. Some of the accidents this year may not have been STA’s fault, Cortright said.

Over the past six months, all STA vehicles have been equipped with telematics technology intended to enhance safety. The tech is still being fine-tuned, Cortright said, but the agency hopes to continue the trend of decreasing accidents it has seen since 2024.