Investigators: Miracle on Wheels

A Minnesota school bus was filled with children cruising down the highway when suddenly the driver blacked out. The bus swerved into the oncoming lane of traffic without anyone at the controls. The FOX 9 investigators obtained exclusive access to the video of the drama as it unfolded.

And now, FOX 9 has learned why the driver likely passed out. The incident had all the makings of a disaster but it turned out to be a miracle on wheels.

The video shows a terrifying sight for any parent whose child rides a bus. It's an image which haunts bus driver Marty Geldert to this day.

"I fear the kids being afraid of getting on a bus because of what happened." She said.

Geldert has only fuzzy memories of the crash. She was hauling 38 kids and 10 adult chaperones back to school from a field trip. As the bus traveled along Fernbrook Lane in Maple Grove everything seemed normal. No one was aware of the danger ahead.

"All of a sudden I got really hot, like clammy hot and I got a very bad stomach pain." Geldert said. She tried to cool herself off by adjusting the air from the blower fan. "I'm like, okay, that's not working so maybe I need to open up the side window a little more." The breeze from the open window didn't help either.

Seconds later Geldert's body goes limp. She's unconscious.

The 12-ton bus is now heading down the road at 55-miles-an-hour without a driver. Bill Gayll was coming the other way. "I was coming over a hill and I noticed there was a bus in an oncoming lane.," he said.

That was the moment Gayll said he could taste his mortality.

“I guess it’s one of those sobering moments that you know life is short.”

The big yellow bus starts drifting across the center line.

Gayll told us, "I wasn't sure which way the bus was going to go."

The driver of an SUV in front of Gayll swerved onto the right shoulder to get out of the way. There were only inches to spare.

Gayll had a big decision to make. “It was the guard rail on this side, and a guard rail on that side and it was me and the bus in the middle."

Gayll was driving a van loaded with thousands of pounds of equipment. It steered about as nimbly as river barge.

"If I would have hit that, it would have been catastrophic." Gayle said. Hel had a second to decide if he should swerve left or right.

He chose left into the oncoming lane. Luckily there was no other traffic. "That was the worst close encounter I've ever had." He said.

At that point the runaway bus had miraculously missed an SUV and a van. Those on the bus are now realizing something's wrong with the driver. One of the adults tried to help but slipped and fell as the bus went off the road down an embankment and into some trees. With the exception of some minor cuts, rattled nerves and a few bumps, every one of the passengers was okay.

Bus driver Geldert said, “I would never want to hurt anybody, ever.”

The big question is why did this happen?

Why does a 39-year-old woman in seemingly good health suddenly black out while she's driving?

Doctors say Geldert's fainting spell could have been caused by the vasovagal nerve that runs from the brain through the digestive tract. If a person gets hot or even experiences simple gas pain that nerve can send out signals for the heart to slow down or even stop pumping. Dr. Sayeed Ikramuddin told us, "The heart rate slows and at a certain rate you’re not going to feed the brain enough oxygen.”

Unless you do something like splash cold water on your face to snap your body out of it you black out.

Geldert said, “Everything was fine, I ate lunch, I had water, I had fluids, it wasn't a hot, hot day you know."

Geldert believes there’s another reason for what happened. Three years ago she had a gastric bypass operation to lose weight. One of the complications of that procedure can be that people sometimes faint after eating certain types of foods.

Dr. Ikramuddin said, "It's clearly attributable to toast with jelly, ice cream, a candy bar."

Geldert said she had none of those foods but still feels the fainting spell is somehow related to the gastric bypass surgery.

“It puts me on hold because I personally don't want to start up a job and have something happen again at another job."

Geldert quit driving school buses after the crash. She didn't want to risk it even though she misses her kids. She had never seen the bus video until FOX 9 showed it to her. “That's what I dream about." She said.

She has nothing but praise for the chaperones who calmed the kids down by having them sing as they got off the bus.

Reporter Jeff Baillon asked what they were singing. Geldert said, “I thought it was the ‘Wheels on the bus go round and round’ but I honest to God don't remember."

Geldert knows things could have been a lot worse.

What if the bus had hit that SUV or smashed into Gayll's van or rolled over? And what if she had passed out just thirty seconds earlier and the bus would’ve drifted to the right instead of the left? Had that happened a pedestrian walking on the side of the road might have