A school bus driver was charged with dangerous driving in east China's Zhejiang Province after overloading his unlicensed bus, the local procuratorate said Wednesday.
Mao Shide was accused of driving an unlicensed school bus to take 42 preschoolers and two adults home from a kindergarten in Linhai City on Dec. 2. The bus was designed to seat 21 children and two adults.
He is the first to face public prosecution on suspicion of dangerous driving in Zhejiang Province after China amended its criminal law to include provisions for road safety, which lists dangerous driving as a crime, in November.
Mao was stopped by police before running into trouble.
He told police 115 kindergarten children were scheduled to take his bus, so he squeezed in as many children as possible in order to save a few trips.
Police found the bus was not properly licensed as a school bus, as its license had expired in March 2015.
The procuratorate said Mao would be penalized according to the new provisions, which included dangerous driving behaviors such as overloading school buses as a crime.
