Southbound Bus Falls Off Skyway; More Than 20 Dead
When in Manila, it seems that negative things simply cannot be avoided anymore (remember the latest Modus Operandi?). On my way home this morning at around 7am, for instance, I got stuck in traffic on the South-bound expressway, only to find out through Twitter that there was a bus accident on the road up ahead. The accident apparently happened at around 5am and it was said that more than 20 people died from it.
While I was hoping that we wouldn’t pass by the accident scene, we did. There’s this thing about accident scenes, where you just can’t look away even if you want to, and what I saw was a bus that was completely overturned and covered in leaves. I also heard that the bus fell onto a van. This van reportedly had 2 people in it, one of which died (the driver) and the other of which was wounded.
Southbound Bus Falls Off Skyway; More Than 20 Dead
Photo credits to Dennis Datu.
While there is no word as to how the bus came to fall off the Skyway so far, it is suspected that the driver may have gone over the speed limit or the wet road might have caused the bus to ram into the railings and fall onto the road below. Since the Skyway railings are said to be pretty strong, the impact must have been really strong, as well.
Because of this accident, the LTFRB has suspended Don Mariano’s units for 30 days, recalled all of the busses for road-worthiness inspections, and has ordered all of their bus drivers to go through re-training. The bus driver of today’s incident will also go through alcohol and drug tests.
I don’t know about you, but all of that still sounds like a pretty light sentence for this offence, especially since Don Mariano also had a similar accident last year, where their bus driver was texting and caused an accident at the Ortigas flyover. I just hope that they actually push through withe the retraining and the inspections. Commuters like me need all the reassurance that they can get When in Manila, after all.
