Flixbus crash in Germany: investigation into driver negligence and ‘quarrel’ with colleague | Abroad

An investigation has been opened against the 62-year-old man from the Czech Republic. He had been behind the wheel for about an hour and a half when the double-decker bus veered off the six-lane highway. According to one of the passengers, this was preceded by an argument with the second driver. That’s a 53-year-old Slovakian. The Public Prosecution Service in Leipzig will neither confirm nor deny that the two had an argument before the accident. “That will be investigated,” a spokesperson told regional broadcaster MDR.

According to the eyewitness, a mother with three children, the start of the bus journey was very ‘uneasy’. According to her, after leaving Berlin around 8 a.m., the driver got lost and suddenly had to slam on the brakes to take a turn. “Next to him was a colleague with whom he got into a discussion about it,” the woman said Leipziger Volkszeitung. She said she could clearly hear that the two drivers were arguing, but she does not know exactly how the accident happened. “I just remember that we were suddenly tossed back and forth and it went black before my eyes.”

Emergency services present en masse after fatal bus accident in Leipzig, article continues below video:

Four passengers were killed in the accident. They are all women, three of whom have now been identified, the police reported on Thursday afternoon. It concerns a 47-year-old Polish woman and a 20-year-old Indonesian, both of whom lived in Berlin, and a 19-year-old German from Bavaria. Initially there were five deaths, but the police adjusted that number downwards on Wednesday evening. A victim who was reported as ‘deceased’ is said to be in a life-threatening condition.

Of the 49 remaining passengers, 35 were taken to hospitals in Leipzig and Halle, about 20 kilometers to the northwest. According to the police, six people suffered ‘very serious injuries’ and several of them underwent emergency surgery. In addition, 29 people were slightly injured. They were treated for bruises, abrasions and concussions, among other things. Twenty of them have now been allowed to leave the hospital.

According to the police, most passengers come from Germany (18). In addition, there were people on board from Afghanistan (4), Indonesia (3), Ukraine (3), Poland (2), Croatia (2), Syria (2), India (2), China (2), the US ( 2), Peru (2), Bosnia (1), Uzbekistan (1), Russia (1), Turkey (1), Iran (1), Macedonia (1), New Zealand (1), France (1), Canada (1), Switzerland (1) and Italy (1).

There are no indications of drug or alcohol use by the driver. According to Flixbus, he also respected the prescribed driving and rest times. However, a German accident investigator criticizes the workload of bus drivers. According to current regulations, they are legally allowed to have ‘a weekly driving time of 56 hours’. “Even if you do all this correctly, I think it is on the limit of what is permissible, even for professional drivers,” Siegfried Brockmann told Germany’s second public broadcaster (ZDF). He is associated with the Björn Steiger foundation, a charity that helps provide funding for emergency services and rescue organizations.

In addition to the driving times, he says, there are also the waiting times at the bus stations where passengers are picked up. “These do not count towards the travel time. You could think about reforms in this area,” Brockmann said. He advocates shorter driving times, i.e. less travel time for bus drivers and more rest breaks.

The Flixbus double-decker long-distance bus was on its way from Berlin to Zurich on Wednesday morning with planned stops in Nuremberg and Munich. The accident happened after about 170 kilometers at around 9:45 am, about 15 kilometers northwest of Leipzig. The bus ended up on the right side of a straight stretch of road, came to a stop after about 100 meters in a small forest and then overturned. According to initial investigation results, no other vehicle was involved. The A9 was closed for twelve hours around the site of the accident in the direction of Munich due to recovery work and was only reopened around 9:30 PM on Wednesday evening.

The mother who told her story to the local newspaper, when she woke up after the accident, saw her three children hanging upside down in the chairs. They were all taken to hospital, but appeared to have only minor injuries. The woman considers herself lucky that things turned out well for her and the children. “We all wore seat belts. Maybe that was our salvation.”

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