By Neale Gulley
BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) - A charter bus of Polish tourists overturned in upstate New York, injuring as many as 19 passengers, and police said on Thursday they were investigating how fast it was traveling on a rain-slicked highway,
The bus carrying a Polish tour group between Niagara Falls, New York, and Trenton, New Jersey, veered off a section of Interstate 81 north of Binghamton, New York, amid a heavy downpour at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, said State Police Captain Eric Janis.
"It was raining very hard at the time of the accident. We're looking at the weather. We want to see if the speed was appropriate for the weather conditions," he said, stressing that no official cause has yet been determined.
Between 14 and 19 passengers were taken to area hospitals for treatment of minor injuries, he said.
"One person was actually pinned under the bus. They were able to get her out and she suffered a minor head laceration," he said.
Janis acknowledged a recent rash of tour bus accidents throughout the state, and said state Department of Transportation officials were working with investigators to complete a thorough safety inspection of the bus, operated by a company called Amerpol Tours based in Morrisville, Pennsylvania.
The department conducts roughly 120,000 roadside inspections of commercial vehicles per year, usually involving accidents, DOT spokesman Bill Reynolds said.
He said the department will hire 20 new inspectors for another 160,000 annual truck and bus inspections conducted throughout the state.
Following a deadly bus accident March 12 just north of New York City that killed 15 passengers, Governor Andrew Cuomo began a crackdown on charter companies, Reynolds said.
In the aftermath, licenses were suspended on eight charter companies, citing violations including about 100 buses.
But in addition to Wednesday's crash, two other fatal accidents in July have prompted Cuomo to initiate new inspection guidelines.
(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Jerry Norton)
