So far 5 dead, 40 hurt.
It was a neighborhood trip from Xindian. They were on their way home when the accident happened.
Many travellers were thrown out of the bus, no seat belts.
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That’s sad. Mountain bus crashes seems to be becoming a too common occurrence, you hear of a few every year now. These bus companies keep saying they will improve safety but it makes me wonder if they learned nothing and are still pushing their drivers causing them to drive overtired. The article says witnesses say he was speeding; was he trying to meet an unreasonable deadline? Who knows and I’m speculating but in any case the safety standards seem to be lax.
My heart goes out to the families of the injured /passed away passengers. You go out thinking you’ll have a nice day away and this happens 
I was terrified because a good friend and excoworker is the lizhang of the next ling, not the one involved, but I had to check. The people affected lived a few blocks away from us, so we may have seen each other, same market, same hospital, same neighborhood.
The skid marks shown are horrific, the bus hit a traffic sign really awful, front side scrapped off. Terrifying that there are still no seatbelts on tour buses here.
The article contains the phrase “疑煞車不靈直,” which Google Translate says is “suspected brake failure.”
But I don’t know, either. Maybe we’ll get a clearer picture later.
Well, brakes obviously worked if there are skid marks. Excessive speed most likely the cause.
And how many busses in Taiwan stay under the speed limits? Even given that the speed limits are often too high for particular roads and vehicles to be safe anyway.
Sorry about the tragedy. That’s a nasty road in a bus.
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I had no idea tour busses had no seatbelts, considering the long-distance busses play a video on loop showing the horrors of what can happen without a seatbelt in the event of a crash.
The private ones for tours may not. At least, in my memory.
Edit:
6 dead update
This right here. The bad driving drives me crazy, but especially the bus drivers’ dangerous habits because they’re responsible for so many people.
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Yep… of course, the driver’s going to blame the brakes. They didn’t stop the bus before the crash! So they failed… EXCEPT he was obviously going too fast for anything but a miracle or a rock cliff to succeed.
a few weeks ago was on bus between Taipei and Hsinchu, the driver kept weaving between traffic on the main highway - treated the bus like it had the physics of a small car , drove me nuts. I wanted to smack the driver. Sure enough at one point he weaved into a lane that another bus was moving into, he jerked the wheel and the bus did a wild rocking back and forth while slowing - I am wondering if he realized how close he was to losing total control of the bus. I’m thinking, jeez this is just a straight section of the highway, there’s no need to complicate this journey. Ugh anyways that was just once that really angered me, the other times have been pretty good.
Is there a way to report bad drivers here? I drive a car on high speed roads 1 and 3 and often see really dangerous actions like swerving and tailing people while flashing lights and honking. Tailing scares the crap out of me especially when they are driving a big rig.
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Wouldn’t you be reporting everyone? I haven’t seen many good drivers here. Most of them are awful. And most seem so hooked on their phones they can’t even turn it off to drive a few miles–I had a taxi driver I gave a bollocking too because he rested his phone on a cubby hole under the wheel and kept trying to half watch baseball.
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I believe so. The driver’s name is on the back of the bus as well as the company’s phone number.
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If you drive on a mountainous road and use your brakes constantly they just overheat and malfunction. In Europe almost all tour buses have an electromagnetic brake system mounted on the drive shaft/flywheel to prevent overheated brakes.
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Footage of the incident:
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In my (limited) experience, hired bus drivers tend to cater to the clients’ requests. That could mean an overly tight schedule, with limited breaks and no meals. In other instances the person paying the driver can pressure them to drive safely.
In the last two years, I’ve accompanied primary school children on at least four field trips. The principal demanded new buses, enforced use of seatbelts, and practiced emergency evacuations (twice per trip).
10 years ago, a principal forced the driver (on mountain roads) to obey the speed limits. Cars lined up and honked their horns for several km. Given the chance, one driver passed the bus and stopped in front, forcing the bus to stop suddenly. The motorist started to argue and get increasing aggressive with our driver, then our principal. Against the advice of local teachers, I got out to see what I could do. I calmly explained (lied), in English, that it was I who demanded the bus drive slowly, particulary for the sake of the children. For some reason (any ideas?), the motorist apologized immediately and got back in his car. Wasn’t sure how the incident was going to develop, but would have “thrown down” to protect my principal (despite never having fought even once in my life).
In brief: drivers are at the mercy of many external factors. I am not laying blame, but the “customer is always right.” Unfortunately, this was an avoidable tragedy.
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So, the bus was rather new, 3 years old
Driver was new to the job, one year with license only.
No exhaustion quoted, driver had not done overtime.
There are skid marks, yes. But the conditions of the brakes are undetermined.
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I only see skid marks from the left tires - possibly he took the turn too quickly, the right tires lifted off the ground, he applied the brakes, but it did little to slow down in time before hitting the wall since only the left tires were in contact with the ground. That is probably what gave him the illusion of the brakes not functioning — brakes don’t do much if the all the tires aren’t touching the ground.
In the old country it happens a lot that brakes overheat and drivers lose control.
Also skid marks could be from flat tires.
If the bus has ABS then the brakes failed to work properly because ABS will prevent 47m skid marks.
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