Preliminary findings from an investigation into an accident in southern Türkiye where 15 people were killed show that the bus that caused it was far exceeding the speed limit.
Fifteen people were killed and 31 others were injured when a passenger bus plowed through a crowd that had stopped to help survivors of another traffic accident on the Tarsus-Adana-Gaziantep (TAG) Highway in Gaziantep province on Saturday. Nineteen others were killed in a similar accident in southeastern Türkiye’s Mardin shortly after the accident, bringing traffic safety into the spotlight.
TAG Highway, a busy route in southern Türkiye, has a speed limit of 100 kph (62 mph) but a device recording the speed of the bus showed it had reached a speed of 130 kph when it crashed into vehicles stopped to help people involved in the first crash. The investigation showed that the bus skidded for 307 meters (1,007.22 feet).
The driver of the bus, which was traveling from Istanbul to the southeastern province of Diyarbakır at the time of the accident, was arrested following the incident and charged with manslaughter by negligence, over the deaths of 15 people, including paramedics, firefighters and journalists who were trying to help others in the earlier crash. The driver has told investigators that he was driving at a speed of about 110 kilometers per hour when he crashed the vehicle. He claimed he noticed the crowd at the scene late and could not remember whether he put on the brake when he saw them. "The bus wouldn’t come to a stop even if I put on the brakes earlier. The distance was not much," he told the investigators.
Meanwhile, two truck drivers, who were arrested following the accident in Mardin which killed 19 people, also spoke to investigators after they were treated for minor injuries, and claimed their brakes malfunctioned. One of the drivers was arrested for the first accident when his truck plowed into two vehicles and killed four people. The second driver had rammed into vehicles at the scene as well as the crowd seeking to help others. The driver of the first truck said the vehicle’s brakes malfunctioned as he was driving downhill. "I geared down but the truck sped up. I steered not to hit cars but the truck overturned. I don’t remember much after that," he told investigators. The driver blamed for hitting people gathered to help victims of the first accident, also said the brakes malfunctioned.
Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Adil Karaismailoğlu told reporters on Monday that the accidents did not stem from road conditions and it appeared that they were the result of driver and vehicle errors. Some locals in Mardin had claimed that the lack of a wider road might have contributed to the accidents. Karaismailoğlu said his ministry was already working on an alternative road in the area where the accidents happened but they would speed up the work now.
More than 3,500 people die every day on the roads according to the World Health Organization (WHO) which declared 2021-2030 as the Decade of Action for Road Safety, with the target of preventing at least 50% of road traffic deaths and injuries by 2030. WHO says nearly 1.3 million deaths are preventable in traffic accidents yearly, describing accidents as a major cause of death globally.
In Türkiye, traffic accidents claim the lives of hundreds every year. Data from the traffic department of the Turkish police show traffic accidents killed 920 people and injured another 127,619 within the first six months of 2022. The main cause of the accidents was driver error. A total of 88,000 accidents were reported across the country in the same period, involving nearly 70,000 cars and more than 25,000 motorcycles. The majority of accidents were in residential areas while the rest occurred in rural parts of the country with sparse populations or along highways. Driver error topped the list of causes of accidents, while some 10,316 accidents were the result of pedestrian errors. Another 2,260 accidents were caused by malfunctioning vehicles. Speeding was the main error on the drivers’ part, though overtaking on narrow roads also proved dangerous.
On Monday, five people were killed in two accidents in the southwestern province of Muğla. A collision of a truck carrying beehives and a car killed five people and injured two others in the Seydikemer district of Muğla. Among the victims were two former mayors and a prominent professor. In the northern province of Amasya, 20 people were injured when a minibus carrying agricultural workers collided with a car. Twenty-one others were injured when a passenger bus hit a pickup truck pulled over by the road due to a breakdown and overturned.