Lecce.-Rome ends up in an escarpment, one dead and at least 14 injured

Perhaps it was the plants that saved them, which slowed down the bus: what is certain is that the consequences could have been tragic for the 38 passengers and the two drivers of the Flixbus which ended up in an escarpment at dawn on the A16 Naples-Canosa , in the Irpinian stretch of Vallesaccarda.

School bus ends up in an escarpment in Pontremoli, in Tuscany: bruised children, 2 in code red. The driver is also serious

“It could have been a massacre,” says a rescuer. The only victim is currently a North African citizen, who has not yet been identified and who was driving a car which was involved, with three other cars, in a rear-end collision: when the bus arrived, the driver tried to avoid the crashed cars and in the maneuver broke through the guardrail, ending up on the embankment of an escarpment. Many were bruised and about fifteen lightly injured who were all discharged in the evening, except for two with a reserved prognosis.

The Flixbus bus he had left from Lecce, bound for Rome. On board, with the two drivers, several students, workers and also several tourists, including foreigners. The accident occurred at dawn, shortly after 3 and a half. Most of the passengers were asleep: “I only heard the crash,” says one of them. The reconstruction is being examined by the traffic police, and the judiciary has opened a file on the accident, but it seems certain that the bus ran off the road in an attempt to avoid some cars – at first it was said two, then four – stopped on the roadway towards Naples, which had rear-ended. The driver attempted a desperate maneuver to avoid crashing into us, but after veering to the left he hit the guard rail and after a spin ended up on the embankment that precedes a steep escarpment. Luckily the trees slowed down the run of the bus which remained suspended in mid-air. It was removed with a crane. In the rear-end collision that preceded the heavy vehicle going off the road, a North African was killed instantly, it would be an Ivorian citizen, a street vendor.

Accident on the A16, flixbus ends up in an embankment. “We were sleeping, then the bang”, that’s what happened

THE DYNAMICS

The man was driving a car that appears to be traveling at high speed and in which there were other foreigners, whom the police suspect to be illegal: they were headed for Naples. One of the foreigners is hospitalized with a confidential prognosis, the others – two or three – have fled on foot and are wanted. A first aid station has been set up in the Grottaminarda gymnasium: 27 bus passengers who suffered minor bruises to their limbs and neck were transferred here and ten of them needed to be hospitalized for further tests. In the late afternoon they were discharged. More critical conditions instead, as well as for the non-EU citizen who was traveling with the victim, for a young man who was driving another of the cars involved: he too is in a reserved prognosis after the doctors reattached his wrist severed in the rear-end collision . The bus accident on the A16 brings to mind the one that happened recently, on May 8, on the state road 373 of the Amalfi Coast, where a bus crashed for many meters from one of the hairpin bends leading to Ravello: the driver died, a young man of 28, who had just left a group of tourists and was returning to the garage.

But the accident on the A16 recalls, above all, the one in which on 28 July 2013, 80 kilometers from today’s crash site, 40 people died when they fell for forty meters from a viaduct in the municipality of Monteforte Irpino: in a downhill stretch , due to a brake failure, the bus after trying to approach the guard rail fell into the void. This is the most serious Italian motorway tragedy. And the accident on the A16 was unfortunately not the only fatality of the day. In Bronte, in the Catania area, a 46-year-old woman lost her life aboard a Volkswagen driven by her husband and on which the couple’s three minor children were also travelling: all three are in serious condition. Instead, a near tragedy in the Grosseto area where a truck and a van with eight foreigners on their way to work collided on the Aurelia state road in the Orbetello area: the toll is five injured, fortunately none of them in danger of life. Read the full article
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