FOUR 18-year-old girls were killed in an accident involving a bus carrying secondary-school students on the D1 cross-country highway between Piešťany and Trnava on June 6. Several of their classmates and teachers suffered serious injuries, the TASR newswire reported.
The police have allegedly accused the driver of the bus of causing the accident, the private TV Markíza reported on June 8. According to the television news network, the police investigator questioned the driver for two hours at the station in Trnava. The reason for the accident is still unknown, Markíza reported.
A total of 29 people, mostly students, were travelling on the bus when the accident occurred. The students of a sports secondary grammar school in Trnava were on their way back from an educational trip to the Orava region in northern Slovakia.
Emergency Medical Care Operational Centre spokesman Boris Chmel said that four ambulances and two helicopters arrived at the scene of the accident. The injured were transported to nearby hospitals in Trnava and Piešťany, with two being sent to the Children’s Faculty Hospital with Polyclinics in Bratislava. TASR reported on June 8 that while seven people remain in the Trnava Faculty Hospital, twelve other patients have already been released.
The Sme daily has meanwhile quoted Gustáv Kasanický of the Institute of Forensic Engineering that if the passengers had their seatbelts fastened, the consequences of the accident would have been milder.
According to Sme, as many as three victims died because they fell out of the bus, which then crushed them.
When asked whether the Interior Ministry wants to pursue stricter enforcement of the use of seatbelts after the accident, it responded that it should be a subject “of wider expert discussion, which should be based on research and real experience from bus accidents”, and that we “should not create premature conclusions based on one traffic accident, especially when the investigation is not completed”.
Source: TASR, Markíza, Sme
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
