A further eight of the more than 50 passengers were seriously injured and 40 suffered light injuries.Continue reading
Further details have been provided on the fatal bus accident which occurred on the M7 highway at 4:55 a.m. on Sunday, resulting in eight deaths and 48 injuries. The head of the tourism company organizing the trip, RoliTúra’s Roland Szabó, confirmed that there were 56 passengers on the daytrip to Baška, Croatia, among them two children and two drivers. While it has been alleged that the driver fell asleep, a passenger who survived the crash told Blikk that this is not true and that the driver lost control due to a tire blowout.
It was early in the morning on the M7 highway near Szabadbattyán when the 56-passenger Volmer-Tours tour bus broke through a guardrail, hit a pillar on an overpass and rolled over into a stream, resulted in the death of eight people, another eight people severely injured and the 40 other passengers lightly injured.
The trip had been organized by the online tourism website RoliTúra, which operates under the company Volmer-Tours Ltd.
Photo by Zoltán Mihádák/MTI
Hvg.hu reached out to a Volmer-Tours Ltd. employee, who stated that the Mercedes bus had been rented and did not belong to the office. Two drivers had been assigned to the vehicle, the one who was driving died in the accident.
State news channel M1 alleged, based on an interpretation of the accident, that “the bus began to speed off the road towards the shoulder, which could mean that the driver was either unwell or had fallen asleep.”
According to an eyewitness, however, the accident was caused by a defective tire. One of the passengers, Nóri, who survived the crash told Blikk that it was not the fault of the driver, saying that “One of our tires blew out, and what happened afterwards was unavoidable.”
Nóri explained that she could not comprehend what had happened and that there was complete darkness in the minutes following the accident, with no cars stopping on the side of the road. One of the passengers kicked open the rear window, and those who could fled the bus, the inside of which was leaking fuel.
Firefighters at the overturned tourbus, which crashed off the M7 highway near Szabadbattyán. Photo by Zoltán Mihádák/MTI
The other driver, János K., who had finished his shift at a resting stop 15-30 minutes prior to the crash, barely survived the accident, but his mother is among the dead. Tabloid Bors reached out to the driver for comment, who informed the news outlet that he is not yet ready to speak on the tragedy.
Police are still investigating the circumstances of the accident.
Feautured photo by Zoltán Mihádák/MTI