Back in the fast lane: AutoNation expanding again

Despite an agonizingly slow economic recovery, the country’s largest auto retailer, Fort Lauderdale-based AutoNation, is thriving again as demand for vehicles expands.

The company, one of Florida’s largest, is posting increasingly strong profits and revenues. Just last week, in a sign of confidence, Autonation announced a major acquisition — buying six large auto stores in Texas — that will add about 700 employees to its national payroll of 19,400.

In announcing the deal Tuesday, which is expected to provide AutoNation with $575 million in additional revenues next year, the company’s CEO and chairman, Mike Jackson, expressed optimism about the prospects for continued growth in vehicle sales.

“You want to know what I’m thinking, look at what I do,” Jackson told viewers on CNBC’s Squawk Box program.

No information was released on the cost of the transactions, but in recent years auto dealerships sometimes sold for three to five times revenue, which would represent a significant investment for the company.

Tough times

To be sure, AutoNation has struggled through some tough times. It was battered by the Great Recession, which depressed sales and pushed the company into a $1.2 billion loss four years ago. As sales began to improve in 2010 and 2011, it was blindsided by a shortage of Japanese-made cars last year after the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 shut down Japanese manufacturers of some essential components.

Since then, however, AutoNation has rebounded. Unit sales, revenues and profits all performed well in the first three quarters of this year, and the company expects new vehicle sales to continue their recovery nationwide, rising to the mid-14 million units this year, up from about 12.7 million in 2011. In the third quarter of 2012, AutoNation’s new car unit sales grew by 21 percent over the same period in 2011, doing better than an estimated 15 percent increase industry wide. November’s sales of new vehicles increased by 21 percent over November 2011 .

The big dealerships acquired sell Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen and Chrysler products in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth markets. They are expected to sell 14,000 new and used autos this year, and will add substantially to AutoNation’s future sales.

“We are in the right industry at the right time,” Jackson said during an interview. “The recovery in new vehicle sales is being driven by replacement demand,” added Jackson, who has 42 years of experience in the auto business. “The average age of the light vehicle fleet in the country has increased to 11 years, and even though cars and trucks last longer today, they can’t go on forever. About 12 to 13 million vehicles are scrapped every year and need to be replaced.”

Other factors are contributing to stronger demand for vehicles. “The population is growing, interest rates are low, there is ample credit available and manufacturers are producing a wide range of new models that offer attractive styling, power and greatly improved gas mileage,” said Jackson, who took over as AutoNation’s CEO in 1999. “Auto financing is more available than it has been in recent years. A little known fact is that people are more likely to default on a mortgage than on a vehicle loan.”

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State scraps plan to have private vendors make license tags

TALLAHASSEE --
Backing away from a possible court fight, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles announced Friday that it will halt its attempt to bid license tag services to private vendors.

Tax collectors — who distribute state tags — and two manufacturing groups tried to block the change by lobbying elected officials and filing legal action against the department.

Highway Safety Chief Julie Jones had wanted to save money by paying private companies $31.4 million over two years to make tags and distribute mail and online orders, but she abandoned the idea under pressure from Attorney General Pam Bondi and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, among others.

“We listened to what everyone had to say, considered questions that vendors posed and received information from our tax collector partners,” Jones said. “Based on the input, we have decided to withdraw [efforts to privatize].”

The decision will keep Florida out of administrative court, which is where it seemed headed Tuesday after department lawyers shut down tax collectors’ requests to retract its invitation to bidders.

Jones’ change of heart earned praise from Bondi, who said the department “did the right thing.”

Manufacturing company Avery Dennison and St. Petersburg-based PRIDE, a nonprofit organization that uses prisoners to manufacture tags, filed formal protests and met with state officials this week.

For them, the state’s decision may only be a temporary victory.

Stephen Hurm, an attorney for the state highway agency, told tax collectors Friday the department will not seek to privatize plate distribution but could reignite the push as early as January to bid out the manufacturing role.

The state may want to switch from raised tags to the more modern flat tags that are thought to be more legible for red light and toll cameras. PRIDE doesn’t have the equipment to make flat tags.

Hillsborough County Tax Collector Doug Belden says he will fight the state if it moves to exclude PRIDE.

“Why change a system that is working well and that customers enjoy? My job as an elected official is to provide the most friendly, capable customer service for the best price. We’re doing that,” said Belden, who criticized Jones for excluding tax collectors in her decisions.

Belden, along with PRIDE lobbyist Wilbur Brewton, argue that flat tags are no easier to read and are more expensive — which will result in more fees for motorists. The company may try to invest in new technology if that’s what it takes to continue working with the state, Brewton said.

“Is the equipment currently sitting in the plant to do it? No,” he said. “This could cause harm, but we would have to calculate that once we see the details.”

Jones hasn’t committed to any tag — flat or raised, she said. She just wants something legible and well-priced.

“We want to get the best product moving into the future in terms of technology, but at a cost that’s affordable,” Jones said. “This is going to be done in a cost-effective manner.”

The controversy over the tags is not expected to stall a planned redesign.

Floridians can continue to vote on four designs for a new state tag at Vote4FloridaTag.com. About 50,000 people have weighed in. The deadline is Dec. 14.

Brittany Alana Davis

can be reached at bdavis@tampabay.com .

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Twitter to Start War on Instagram In Time for Christmas

Holidays seem to be Instagram‘s bread and butter, so it makes sense that Twitter would fire their first shot in the war on Instagram when the app is at its most vulnerable. 

RELATED: Why You Can’t See Instagram Photos on Twitter Anymore

If we learned anything from Thanksgiving, it’s that people love to Instagram their holidays. Turkeys, stuffing, table settings: you Amaro’d it all. It was the service’s best day ever. There were 10 million pictures Instagrammed on Thanksgiving. So it’s not a logistical stretch to imagine the holiday season – Hanukkah starts tonight! —  will be big business for Instagram, too. Christmas day will probably be especially big since it combines dinner, like Thanksgiving, and presents. (Also: check your Instagram feed right now and you’re sure to see at least 3 Christmas trees.)

RELATED: Meet the Parade of Greedy Crybabies Who Didn’t Get iPhones for Christmas

And so comes a report from AllThingsD’s Mike Isaac saying Twitter will launch its own photo filters on time for Christmas, likely to try and capitalize on that rush of OMG I got a cool thing! photo-sharing. Instagram stopped their photos from being shown on Twitter, because they want people on their site. The move makes enough sense, because Instagram is owned by Facebook and not Twitter, but it still sucks for the rest of us. The two companies are now in a budding rivalry over photo-sharing, so this is it, it’s war, we guess. 

RELATED: How to Get Over the Twitter-Instagram War on Photos

If you’re having trouble watching these two former friends fight, please read The Atlantic Wire’s Rebecca Greenfield’s guide to getting over it. The holidays is no place for rivalries. Didn’t Jingle All The Way teach you people anything? 

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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How They Pulled Off 'The Impossible'

The true story of the devastating 2004 tsunami that consumed the coast of Phuket, Thailand -- and how one family survived it -- is reenacted by Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor in The Impossible. Watch the video to go behind the scenes...

Video: Tsunami Survivor Petra Nemcova Reacts to Latest Disaster in Japan

In theaters December 21, The Impossible finds Naomi as Maria and Ewan as her husband Henry, who are enjoying their winter vacation in Thailand with their three sons. On the day after Christmas, their relaxing holiday in paradise becomes an exercise in terror and survival when their beachside hotel is pummeled by an extraordinary, unexpected tsunami.

Video: Watch the Trailer for 'The Impossible'

The Impossible tracks just what happens when this close family and tens of thousands of strangers must come together to grapple with the mayhem and aftermath of one of the worst natural catastrophes of our time.

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Give us a break

Antifragile

Things That Gain
From Disorder

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Random House

After “Lawrence of Arabia” swept the 1962 Academy Awards and made a mountain of money, director David Lean had a question for Sam Spiegel, the film’s producer. Before and during filming, Spiegel repeatedly told Lean the project was a disaster, suddenly ordered him to move production from Jordan to Spain to save money and terrorized Lean (who had to have surgery on an eye after suffering a sand-related injury in the desert) into a frantic seven-days-a-week editing pace by giving him only four months to finish the film in time for a royal gala by Christmas.

Getty Images

“You were absolutely horrible to me,” Lean told Spiegel, and asked him why. Spiegel’s answer: “Baby, artists work better under pressure.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the Lebanon-born NYU professor of risk engineering and former Wall Street pit trader whose book “The Black Swan,” about the potential results of extremely unlikely events, is widely credited with predicting the financial crisis, believes there is a lot of truth to clichés like “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” and “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

But until now there’s never been a word for the concept of something that actually benefits from (rather than merely resists) stress. Think of the difference between a dragon that is hard to kill and a Hydra that regrows two heads for every one you cut off.

Taleb’s new word is in the title of his new book “Antifragile.” It’s a kind of philosophical essay that reinforces and expands upon 20th-century economist Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction. Some things need to break in order for the whole to improve, and we resist this tendency — by coddling fragile systems such as banking — at our peril. Yet at this moment, the coddlers, or “fragilistas,” as Taleb calls them, are very much in charge.

If antifragility means redundancy — when you keep extra commodities on hand in case of natural disaster, you are actually better off after a hurricane because the price of the items you hold skyrockets — then debt is a particularly dangerous kind of fragility. Debt can spiral, accelerate. At a firm, doubts about your solvency can lead to a “margin call,” which in turn means you have to raise more money.

“It is only when you don’t care about your reputation that you tend to have a good one,” Taleb writes. “Just as in matters of seduction, people lend the most to those who need them the least.”

So, where is our debt situation heading? Taleb doesn’t offer a prediction but notes dryly that “fragilista” Alan Greenspan’s response to the financial crisis was, “It never happened before.”

Taleb calls this failure of imagination “the Lucretius problem,” after the philosopher who noted that only a fool thinks that the tallest mountain in the world will be the size of the tallest one he has ever seen.

The much-vaunted Dodd-Frank law meant to prevent the next bank crisis centrally consisted of appointing future commissions of smart people whose job it will be to make sure nothing bad ever happens again. That’ll work!

Taleb, while pointing out that he is not against intervention per se, scoffs at naive interventionists and calls what they do “iatrogenics” — damage caused by the healer. George Washington, for instance, died after doctors prescribed massive bloodletting. Micromanaging small forest fires, which clear out dead wood, can lead to more catastrophic fires later.

Greenspan, with his constant small adjustments to interest rates that were meant to prevent swings in the stock market and keep the economy growing steadily, instead inflated a monster liquidity bubble that was doomed to pop, earning him the title “the top economic iatrogenist of all time” from Taleb. Greenspan’s avowed libertarianism, ironically, stamps him in many minds as someone who encouraged disaster by doing nothing when (like Herbert Hoover in an earlier age) the truth is the opposite.

Taleb can be eccentric: He says he won’t drink any liquids that are less than 1,000 years old — just coffee, wine and water. (Don’t get him started on the evils of that insufficiently tested potion you call orange juice.) And like many engineering types born without a humor nodule, he can be unintentionally funny, such as when he describes his beloved antifragility as “nonsissy.”

But the book is alive with ideas that invite closer study, and Taleb’s mathematical jargon, aggressive contrarianism and catchy new words often seem like mere common sense.

He notes that iatrogenics infects political science, urban planning, education, and other domains, and that no experts he talked to in any of those fields believed they could possibly be doing any damage. To these he cites the Koran: “Those who are wrongful while thinking of themselves that they are righteous.”

kyle.smith@nypost.com

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Events showcase Miami’s growth as tech center

One by one, representatives from six startup companies walked onto the wooden stage and presented their products or services to a full house of about 200 investors, mentors, and other supporters Thursday at Incubate Miami’s DemoDay in the loft-like Grand Central in downtown Miami. With a large screen behind them projecting their graphs and charts, they set out to persuade the funders in the room to part with some of their green and support the tech community.

Just 24 hours later, from an elaborate “dojo stage,” a drummer warmed up the crowd of several hundred before a “Council of Elders” entered the ring to share wisdom as the all-day free event opened. Called TekFight, part education, part inspiration, and part entertainment, the tournament-style program challenged entrepreneurs to earn points to “belt up” throughout the day to meet with the “masters” of the tech community.

The two events, which kicked off Innovate MIA week, couldn’t be more different. But in their own ways, like a one-two punch, they exuded the spirit and energy growing in the startup community.

One of the goals of the TekFight event was to introduce young entrepreneurs and students to the tech community, because not everyone has found it yet and it’s hard to know where to start, said Saif Ishoof, the executive director of City Year Miami who co-founded TekFight as a personal project. And throughout the event, he and co-founder Jose Antonio Hernandez-Solaun, as well as Binsen J. Gonzalez and Jeff Goudie, wanted to find creative, engaging ways to offer participants access to some of the community’s most successful leaders.

That would include Alberto Dosal, chairman of CompuQuip Technologies; Albert Santalo, founder and CEO of CareCloud; Jorge Plasencia, chairman and CEO of Republica; Jaret Davis, co-managing shareholder of Greenberg Traurig; and more than two dozen other business and community leaders who shared their war stories and offered advice. Throughout the day, the event was live-streamed on the Web, a TekFight app created by local entrepreneur and UM student Tyler McIntyre kept everyone involved in the tournament and tweets were flying — with #TekFight trending No. 1 in the Miami area for parts of the day. “Next time Art Basel will know not to try to compete with TekFight,” Ishoof quipped.

‘Miami is a hotbed’

After a pair of Chinese dragons danced through the audience, Andre J. Gudger, director for the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Small Business Programs, entered the ring. “I’ve never experienced an event like this,” Gudger remarked. “Miami is a hotbed for technology but nobody knew it.”

Gudger shared humorous stories and practical advice on ways to get technology ideas heard at the highest levels of the federal government. “Every federal agency has a director over small business — find out who they are,” he said. He has had plenty of experience in the private sector: Gudger, who wrote his first computer program on his neighbor’s computer at the age of 12, took one of his former companies from one to 1,300 employees.

There were several rounds that pitted an entrepreneur against an investor, such as Richard Grundy, of the tech startup Flomio, vs. Jonathan Kislak, of Antares Capital, who asked Grundy, “why should I give you money?”

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Preservation board to decide on Herald building

The city of Miami’s historic preservation office has compiled a lengthy, detailed report that substantially bolsters the case for designation of The Miami Herald’s “monumental’’ bayfront building as a protected landmark based on both its architectural merits and its historic significance.

Somewhat unusually, the 40-page report by city preservation officer Megan McLaughlin, which is supplemented by 30 pages of bibliography, plans and photographs, carries no explicit recommendation to the city’s preservation board, which is scheduled to decide the matter on Monday.

But her analysis gathers extensive evidence that the building’s history, the influential executives and editors associated with it, and its fusion of Mid-Century Modern and tropical Miami Modern (MiMo) design meet several of the legal criteria for designation set out in the city’s preservation ordinance and federal guidelines. A building has to meet just one of eight criteria to merit designation.

A spokeswoman for the city’s historic preservation office said there is no obligation to make a recommendation and the city’s preservation board didn’t ask for one.

Supporters of designation, including officials at Dade Heritage Trust, the preservation group that has received sometimes withering criticism from business and civic leaders for requesting designation, said they felt vindicated by the report, even as they concede that persuading a board majority to support it remains an uphill battle.

“It’s important that an objective expert is saying basically the same thing we’ve been saying, particularly in an environment where there is so much pressure,’’ said DHT chief executive Becky Roper Matkov. “It’s very hard to refute. When you look at the building’s architecture and history, it’s so blatantly historic, what else can you say?’’

The report also rebuts key pieces of criticism of the designation effort leveled by opponents of designation, including architects and a prominent local preservation historian hired by Genting, the Malaysian casino operator that purchased the Herald property last year for $236 million with plans to build a massive destination resort on its 10 acres. The newspaper remains in the building rent-free until April, when it will move to suburban Doral.

Citing federal rules, McLaughlin concluded that the building dates to its construction in 1960 and 1961, and not to its formal dedication in 1963. That’s significant because it makes the building legally older than 50 years. Buildings newer than that must be “exceptionally significant’’ to merit designation under city regulations. Opponents of designation have claimed the building does not qualify because it’s several months short of 50 years if dated from its ’63 opening.

The property also has a “minimal’’ baywalk at the rear but there is room to expand it, the report indicates. The building is considerably set back from the edge of Biscayne Bay, between 68 feet at the widest point and 23 feet at its narrowest, the report says. That’s comparable to what many new buildings provide, thanks in part to variances granted by the city, and could blunt criticism that the Herald building “blocks’’ public access to the bay.

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There’s only one way to save Medicare

Fresh off his election victory, President Obama is pushing back against GOP efforts to reform Medicare — promising that only he can save the program.

Indeed, the president’s surrogates regularly brag that the Obama health-care law “extends the program’s life by eight years.” In other words, the president will save Medicare by making sure it doesn’t go bankrupt . . . until a few years after he leaves office.

That’s not good enough.

To truly fortify Medicare and preserve it for the next generation, we need the entire program modeled on the only part that is working for both seniors and taxpayers — Part D, the Medicare prescription-drug benefit.

That means an honest assessment of Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan, which would convert Medicare to a premium-support program that relies on private competition. But Obama has expressed little interest in such an effort — even though it’s the only thing that’ll work.

The Department of Health and Human Services just announced that monthly premiums in Part D will again average $30 next year. That number’s basically held steady for four years; premiums are only up 2.5 percent since 2006.

Contrast that with the typical premium of an employer-sponsored family health insurance plan, which rose 4 percent from 2011 to 2012 and 9 percent the year before, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. In other words, Part D’s costs are holding steady even as health costs are growing just about everywhere else.

Critics of Part D are right to point out that it’s an unfunded liability: When Congress created the program, it included no dedicated financing or offsetting spending cuts; the entire cost was simply added to the budget deficit. That’s lamentable. Part D should’ve been paid for at its creation.

But the fact remains that, unlike so many other government programs, Part D’s price tag has proved far lower than expected. As in every other market, competition in Part D has resulted in lower prices and better service.

Since the program began, the Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly lowered its cost estimates for the program. Earlier this year, the agency issued a report projecting that Part D would cost about 43 percent less next year than it had estimated back in 2004. At the same time, the CBO increased its cost projections for the other major parts of Medicare.

But these savings haven’t come at the expense of coverage or the satisfaction of beneficiaries. The existence of Part D has helped ensure that almost 90 percent of Medicare beneficiaries have stable drug coverage. And the vast majority are happy: Multiple surveys have shown satisfaction levels for Part D at near or above 90 percent.

Facts like these are proving inconvenient for many Democrats, who have long disliked Part D.

Back in 2003, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi predicted that “most seniors will be worse off,” under Part D. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) scoffed at the program’s design. “We hear the claim that private-sector competition will drive down costs and save Medicare. Nonsense!”

Fast-forward to 2012. That “nonsense” is now reality.

Indeed, contrary to Sen. Harkin’s claims, market competition is the reason Part D has cost taxpayers less than originally estimated. Beneficiaries have the power to choose drug plans that work for them — and providers have to compete for seniors’ business. There’s no one-size-fits-all drug plan — unlike the rest of Medicare.

Despite the program’s success, some Democrats are still trying to undermine its competitive design. They’ve repeatedly proposed giving federal bureaucrats the power to implement price controls within the system — and thereby undermine the private-sector competition at the heart of the program.

Some have also called for added rebates from drug makers for “dual eligible” seniors — those who are enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid — to try to further reduce Medicare spending. But such a policy would simply saddle seniors with additional costs. Former CBO chief Douglas Holtz-Eakin has estimated that these so-called rebates would drive Part D premiums up by 20 percent to 40 percent.

What Congress needs is a plan to preserve Medicare, not destroy it. President Obama’s agenda, by his own admission, leaves the program on the road to fiscal collapse.

Dee Stewart is president of Americans for a Balanced Budget, a national grassroots advocacy group.

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Events showcase Miami’s growth as tech center

One by one, representatives from six startup companies walked onto the wooden stage and presented their products or services to a full house of about 200 investors, mentors, and other supporters Thursday at Incubate Miami’s DemoDay in the loft-like Grand Central in downtown Miami. With a large screen behind them projecting their graphs and charts, they set out to persuade the funders in the room to part with some of their green and support the tech community.

Just 24 hours later, from an elaborate “dojo stage,” a drummer warmed up the crowd of several hundred before a “Council of Elders” entered the ring to share wisdom as the all-day free event opened. Called TekFight, part education, part inspiration, and part entertainment, the tournament-style program challenged entrepreneurs to earn points to “belt up” throughout the day to meet with the “masters” of the tech community.

The two events, which kicked off Innovate MIA week, couldn’t be more different. But in their own ways, like a one-two punch, they exuded the spirit and energy growing in the startup community.

One of the goals of the TekFight event was to introduce young entrepreneurs and students to the tech community, because not everyone has found it yet and it’s hard to know where to start, said Saif Ishoof, the executive director of City Year Miami who co-founded TekFight as a personal project. And throughout the event, he and co-founder Jose Antonio Hernandez-Solaun, as well as Binsen J. Gonzalez and Jeff Goudie, wanted to find creative, engaging ways to offer participants access to some of the community’s most successful leaders.

That would include Alberto Dosal, chairman of CompuQuip Technologies; Albert Santalo, founder and CEO of CareCloud; Jorge Plasencia, chairman and CEO of Republica; Jaret Davis, co-managing shareholder of Greenberg Traurig; and more than two dozen other business and community leaders who shared their war stories and offered advice. Throughout the day, the event was live-streamed on the Web, a TekFight app created by local entrepreneur and UM student Tyler McIntyre kept everyone involved in the tournament and tweets were flying — with #TekFight trending No. 1 in the Miami area for parts of the day. “Next time Art Basel will know not to try to compete with TekFight,” Ishoof quipped.

‘Miami is a hotbed’

After a pair of Chinese dragons danced through the audience, Andre J. Gudger, director for the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Small Business Programs, entered the ring. “I’ve never experienced an event like this,” Gudger remarked. “Miami is a hotbed for technology but nobody knew it.”

Gudger shared humorous stories and practical advice on ways to get technology ideas heard at the highest levels of the federal government. “Every federal agency has a director over small business — find out who they are,” he said. He has had plenty of experience in the private sector: Gudger, who wrote his first computer program on his neighbor’s computer at the age of 12, took one of his former companies from one to 1,300 employees.

There were several rounds that pitted an entrepreneur against an investor, such as Richard Grundy, of the tech startup Flomio, vs. Jonathan Kislak, of Antares Capital, who asked Grundy, “why should I give you money?”

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Driver of fatal MIA bus crash that killed two offers his “deepest sympathy.”

The driver behind the wheel of a bus that rammed into an overpass at Miami International Airport — killing two passengers and leaving many more injured — expressed his sympathies Thursday to those affected, while a group of survivors began speaking with a lawyer.

On Thursday, a relative sent out a short statement in Spanish from driver Ramon Ferreiro. In it, Ferreiro extended his “deepest sympathy” to the families of those killed in “the terrible accident.”

“I know there are no words of comfort for what happened, but my family and I are praying for all those affected and their loved ones,” he wrote in Spanish. “I’m emotionally and physically very shocked by what happened, and for this reason I ask you to respect my family’s privacy during this difficult time.”

The crash happened a few minutes before 7:30 a.m. Saturday. The bus carried members of a Jehovah’s Witness congregation on their way to the annual general assembly meeting in West Palm Beach.

Ferreiro, 47, took a wrong turn on Le Jeune Road. He sped past multiple signs warning of the low clearance at the airport’s arrival concourse, smashing the 11-foot-tall bus into an overpass.

Two people sitting in the front were killed; the remaining 30 passengers went to hospitals for examinations and treatment.

As of Thursday, four people from the crash remained at Jackson Memorial Hospital, spokeswoman Lidia Amoretti said. Of the group, three were in good condition and one was in critical.

Another eight people admitted after the crash already had been discharged.

And some of the survivors have begun speaking with West Palm Beach lawyer Patrick Cousins.

Cousins, who also is Jehovah’s Witness, said that members of his religion tend to shy away from legal battles, and that’s why he hopes to settle the matter with the bus service’s insurance company out of court.

The goal, he said, would be to get compensation for costs such as their hospital bills.

“We are not the type of people to create problems or issues,” Cousins said. “But this is not something we really created. We just want to make sure everybody gets their compensation.”

Saturday’s accident appears to be the first blemish on the record of both the driver and the bus company, Miami Bus Service Corp., which is owned by Mayling and Alberto Hernandez.

Ferreiro has a valid commercial driver’s license with the proper endorsement to carry passengers, according to records from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

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