Being a celebrity isn’t always a good thing, such as in the case of the man who won a Lamborghini in a contest and crashed it six hours later. On January 31st, at 7 oclock in the morning, a Nissan Leaf driver rear-ended an empty school bus – this event caused a lot of press, definitely a lot more press than the driver wanted. At first glance, it seems that all of the coverage was because of the circumstances – in early daylight, a driver hits a giant yellow bus. Really, all of the press around the Nissan Leaf crash comes out of the recent Chevy Volt battery fire concerns and NHTSA investigations.

After a Chevy Volt caught fire weeks after an accident, there’s been widespread fear, or at least fear reported in the media, that electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles are not safe. After crash testing the Chevy Volt, the vehicle spontaneously combusted more than 3 weeks later. Turns out coolant leaked into the battery compartment and reacted with the battery cells causing a chemical reaction that started a fire. An investigation by the NHTSA said earlier this month that the Volt and other electric vehicles pose no more risk for a fire than conventional vehicles do with their large fuel tanks.

The school bus was stopped at the time of the accident so the Nissan Leaf sustained substantial damage. The front an side airbags deployed during the accident, and from the photo is looks like the bumper, hood, fender, possibly the driver’s side a-pillar, and all sorts of ‘under hood’ items are damaged/destroyed.

Some members on the Nissan Leaf forum have joked that Nissan should buy this car and hide it from the media before it bursts into flames in a few weeks.