Major road accidents kill 41, injure 74
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-07-18 05:32

Four serious road accidents occurred in different locations around China over the weekend, claiming 41 lives and injuring 74 others.

A long-distance coach travelling from Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality with 55 passengers, drove off a 120-metre-high cliff near Enshi, a city in Central China's Hubei Province, on Saturday morning.

Seventeen people on the coach, including the driver, were killed. All the 38 others on aboard the coach were also injured.

Among the 55 people aboard the bus, 18 were students aged below 15, mostly summer vacation takers on their way to visit parents working as migrant workers in South China's business hub Shenzhen.

Preliminary investigations suggest that the driver, named Luo Yunfu, continued to drive despite being tired, something which is now thought to be the main cause of the accident. A slippery road caused by rain is also being blamed for the tragedy.

The second accident, killing 10 and injuring five, happened at around 6 am yesterday in Wushan County of Chongqing, when a small tractor overturned and fell down a cliff. The cause of the accident is still under investigation.

All the injured were hospitalized and were out of danger, according to the traffic police.

The last accident involved three vehicles that collided with each other on an expressway in Shenzhen, a city in Guangdong Province, leaving nine people dead and 31 injured. Five of the injured were in a serious condition.

Initial investigation indicates that a bus ran into a truck at around 1 am on Saturday after one of its tyres exploded. Another truck following the coach failed to stop in time and collided with the bus.

In the fourth accident, five people in a car were killed early yesterday as their vehicle rammed into the rear of a parked truck on a freeway in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The collision took place around 5:00 am on a freeway connecting Nanning, the regional capital, and Liuzhou in central Guangxi.

(China Daily 07/18/2005 page2)

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