More than a dozen North Carolina students were taken to a hospital after a motor vehicle accident involving a school bus last Friday afternoon.

A pick-up truck slammed into the back of the bus about 150 miles east of Charlotte, in Cumberland County.

None of the injuries are reported to be life-threatening, so tragedy was averted in this case.

A 14-year-old student on the bus told a local TV station that the impact of the truck was "significant."

"Glass flew everywhere, people got cut," he said. "Glass flew all the way to the front and cut through people's actual pants and cut them."

Law enforcement officials arrested the pick-up truck driver, 41, and charged him with driving while intoxicated, reckless driving and failure to reduce speed to avoid colliding with a vehicle.

The driver was also taken to a nearby hospital with injuries. He's listed in serious condition.

Because school buses are designed to withstand crashes better than most passenger vehicles, life-threatening injuries and student fatalities are typically averted in these kinds of collisions.

However, no one can measure the fright the students must have felt as the bus's back end was caved in, the school vehicle was knocked forward and students were thrown around inside.

It's very possible that physical injuries would have been much more severe if the truck had hit the back of a passenger car with that force.

It's also possible that the injured students will be successful if they seek compensation for the medical care they need to treat the injuries they sustained.

In similar cases, accident injury victims do well to discuss the case with a personal injury attorney before talking it over with an insurance company representative.

Source: WTVD-TV "School bus, pickup truck collide in Cumberland County," Jan. 27, 2012