Looks like a tourist bus crashed in Tainan.
News says 20 dead.
:s
Reports vary; some say the bus had bad brakes.
Even worse (if possible) it was a school trip, so a lot of dead kids and their parents.
The news is saying 22 dead now, 5 of them kids - 24 injured. Looking at the pictures of what’s left of the bus, I’m surprised there are that many still alive.
Brakes could have been faulty but I doubt it as you can clearly see the tread marks on the pavement as the bus skidded trying to stop. More likely the driver was going too fast/was careless/didn’t see the turn.
The wifey tells me that the students are from a school quite close to us in Kaohsiung that we we pass by everyday. Awful, awful, awful.
This is really disturbing. But someone told me recently that safety classes were booked. So, hopefully in the next year there will be a decline of such incidents. 
That’s horrible. Another senseless accident resulting in needless and pointless deaths. Any news on wether or not the bus driver is still alive? If so, I hope to hell the wanker gets major jail time and possibly who ever was responsible for the condition of the bus.
We’ll read about it tomorrow in the Apple Daily with all the gory photos 
The news is saying 22 dead now, 5 of them kids - 24 injured. Looking at the pictures of what’s left of the bus, I’m surprised there are that many still alive.[/quote]
any details for those of us not living in taiwan?
school trips often end in tragedy (sadly) Maybe school trips shouldnt be arranged anymore. Customarily schools arrange a trip for graduation. And often a bus gets in an accident and people get killed. I think school trips should be banned.
there was one very notable one i remember. A school bus had caught on fire and the driver spent precious moments trying to put it out. Long story short, something like 50 people burned to death. they couldnt get the one emergency door open that was in the back. the bus started burning from the engine in the front. the driver lept out and was the only one saved. the kids and their teacher all burned to death. This was a kindergarten school trip. I saw on tv where the other 4 or 5 buses returned and all the parents were looking for their kids, cuz no one knew who was killed and who not. The tv focused on one mother in particular who was looking from bus to bus and it finally dawned on her and everyone watching that her son was on the ill fated bus !! That is a look of utter helplessness and sadness and is a scene i will never forget !!
i heard the news when i was driving in my car in taipei city in the early evening. IM not normally an emotional guy, but i cried hearing that news. I felt so bad that no one was able to take any action to smash the glass windows to help.
the buses used for the greyhound type government buses have windows that all open outwards in emergency. Lots of the other buses only have one emergency door. I think most have more then one emergency door now after that accident. bus fires are NOT that unusual it seems. The overworked engines do catch on fire sometimes.
The news is saying 22 dead now, 5 of them kids - 24 injured. Looking at the pictures of what’s left of the bus, I’m surprised there are that many still alive.[/quote]
any details for those of us not living in taiwan?[/quote]
[quote=“The Central News Agency”]教部：鼎金國小家長會遊覽車翻覆 22死24傷
（中央社記者劉嘉韻台北三日電）高雄市鼎金國小家長會旅遊活動，今天傍晚傳出遊覽車翻覆意外。教育部校安中心晚上九時統計指出，這項意外共有二十二人死亡，二十四人受傷，死者中有一名是小孩，其餘二十一人是成人。
高雄市鼎金國小家長會今天舉辦旅遊活動，回程途中載有四十六名乘客的遊覽車，在台南縣楠西鄉灣丘路段失控翻覆，墜落二十多公尺深的山谷，教育部校園安全暨災害防救中心接獲通報後，立即通知台南、高雄地區軍訓教官，前往附近醫院協助處理。
校安中心根據通報彙整資料指出，這輛遊覽車共載有四十六人，其中有二十九名大人，十七名小孩，車禍意外造成二十一名大人、一名小孩死亡，以及二十四人受傷送醫。[/quote]
So they’re now saying that all but one of the dead were adults - the bus was “out of control” and went over a 20m-plus drop at the side of the road. The accident happened in Nanxi Township, Tainan County. On the FTV news they said the bus went through a concrete barrier on a narrow road and the driver (who is still alive) claims the brakes failed. It doesn’t really have that much to add - there were seventeen kids on board; the sixteen injured plus the remaining eight adults are being treated in hospital.
Too true. And all too common, as others have said.
According to the Taiwan News, the driver wasn’t legally allowed to be driving a tour bus.
[quote]The Directorate General of Highways noted that since the bus driver Yen Hui-wen was hired illegally, his employer, the Ba Fang bus company, will be fined NT$90,000.
The highway bureau noted that although Yen obtained his commercial driver’s license last October, the law requires that drivers must have a commercial driver’s license for at least three years before he or she is allowed to drive a tour bus.[/quote]
Most busses I see on the roads have either illegal lights, bald tyres,remoulded tyres that explode after long use, bad bodywork or something else. The drivers aren’t required to rest after so long and they chat on the phone. I’m not shocked at all that there has been another bus crash.
a whopping NT$1,956 per victim in fines for the illegal bus driver’s company… now that’s going to send a message to the anarchic, reckless, irresponsible mess that is the Taiwan bus industry that the govt. takes the law seriously… :fume:
I’ll bet the driver was buzzed/drunk on Whisby and binlang, but this having happened in the heart of “good old boy” country, Tainan county, that the cops on the scene will have “overlooked” breathalyzing him… Brake “failure”, now there’s a surprise… If you take a bus designed for standard urban use, never maintain or service it, then drive it around the mountains of Taiwan like a race car, the brakes will overheat and/or fail, guaranteed… It wasn’t brake failure that killed these people and hundreds more like them, it was a failure by the govt. and police to regulate driver education and vehicle safety/maintenance standards… I just hope that from this recent spate of carnage on the roads that’s been splashed across the soap opera media will do something to jolt these mindless law makers and lazy, incompetent police into upgrading Taiwan’s status from it’s current level of 無法無天.
condolences, peace and strength to the family and friends of those senselessly killed and injured…
Another bus tragedy in less than 2 weeks? This is scary stuff…
Im going to Taipei tomorrow and my friends asked if I will take a bus… Umm… No frickin way, thanks…
Its the train all the time for me… I dont mind the extra time it takes…
RIP to the victims of this accident… 
Whoopdi-fucking-shit. A whole NT$90,000. As plasmatron said, what the hell is that going to do? The company should have its business licence revoked for hiring someone illegally and be forced to compensate (not that there is any monetary compensation for loss of a child, but you know what I mean) the familys of victims at least 10 million dollars.
These little slap on the wrist punishments are just a joke. I say we should all start some kind of a rally or something to see true justice brought to these ignorant shits for allowing something like this to happen.
wow, 90,000nt. That will learn them.
Not.
I just saw the news coverage on TV…
They were showing the rescue teams sifting through the wreckage using ‘helmet cam’ and then graphic shots of the bodies laid out…
Then to top it off they had an extended segment showing the victims families in their grief…
Is this kind of gratuitous footage normal here? I have to admit its one of the first times that I have watched the ‘news’ here and it left me a bit rattled…
[quote=“pubba”]I just saw the news coverage on TV…
They were showing the rescue teams sifting through the wreckage using ‘helmet cam’ and then graphic shots of the bodies laid out…
Then to top it off they had an extended segment showing the victims families in their grief…
Is this kind of gratuitous footage normal here? I have to admit its one of the first times that I have watched the ‘news’ here and it left me a bit rattled…[/quote]
Yes, it’s pretty much the norm. I watch the news at the gym. Something more than a little incongruous about jogging while watching bodies being scraped off the road.
[quote=“pubba”]I just saw the news coverage on TV…
They were showing the rescue teams sifting through the wreckage using ‘helmet cam’ and then graphic shots of the bodies laid out…
Then to top it off they had an extended segment showing the victims families in their grief…
Is this kind of gratuitous footage normal here? I have to admit its one of the first times that I have watched the ‘news’ here and it left me a bit rattled…[/quote]
And that, my friend, is why I avoid the news like the plague. It’s nothing but gossip and gratiutous gore. And political mudslinging. In fact, there is rarely anthing newsworthy on the news.
Seriously though, anyone up for starting up some kind of a rally or website or something to bring attention to the disgusting “punishments” being handed out over this, PM me and we can try get the ball going.
The brakes failed…Sure, after the driver cruised down the mountain road in too high of gear, burned out his own brakes and blamed it on mechanical failure. This isn’t the first time or even the tenth.
90,000NT…For killing 22 people. OMFG :fume:
A few years ago, in Ying Ge, a truck was stopped on the railroad tracks. Ahead of him was a “T” intersection. The guys in the front couldn’t get out, the train couldn’t stop. There were no bamboo arms to come down and bloke/warn traffic.
2 dead
Not two months later, some numbskull driving a bus full of vacationing junior high kids decides to save 50NT dollars and drive the bus to Ying Ge so he can jump on the highway in SanXia. Same thing happens.
5-10 dead, can’t recall.
FINALLY they widened the road and put in bamboo poles to stop traffic when the lights and bells are sounded.
If the accidents had been a year apart, nothing would have been done.
My point is this: unless the hammer is repeatedly smashed into the governments’ head, they don’t waste their time thinking about the past. Make a fuss, kick up dust, and then slip out in the confusion.
What will change? Nada. Why, because AFAIK no high ranking politician or his wife was injured or killed in this crash. If there had been an “important” death, surely the bus companies would be under far more scrutiny. What we are seeing now is the dust kicking and fuss making. Soon, some celebrity’s tit will fall out of her shirt and all will be forgotten.
But, next year, all people in cars, everywhere, even in the back seat, MUST wear their seatbelts, because the Taichung mayor’s wife was seriously injured.
First though, the government might want to procure some money to have the police force’s heads removed from their asses. And this “crouching intellect, sphinctered brain syndrom” can easily be seen in front of ANY school in the country as Moms and dads, grandmas and grampas throw their kids on the back of scooter with no helmets, while the police stand there stopping traffic so the helmetless children can safely get on the dangerous street unprotected.
When it comes to preventing death on the roads, this country blows goats. :raspberry: