19 dead in Occidental Mindoro bus crash

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BY PRINCE GOLEZ and ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Wednesday, March 21, 2018
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Poe calls for creation of transport safety board

MANILA – A passenger bus careened off a winding dirt road and hurtled down a ravine in Occidental Mindoro province, killing 19 people, police said Wednesday.

The crash Tuesday night in a mountainous area of Sablayan town injured 21 other passengers, including an infant, police investigator Alexis Go said.

The crash reminded the public of the dangers posed by public transportation, said Sen. Grace Poe.

“The list of tragic road accidents and their casualties continue to increase because vehicles that are not roadworthy or even those we label as ‘rolling coffins’ are still allowed to ply the roads with near impunity,” said the chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Public Services.

Go said the bus apparently went out of control and swerved wildly on a downhill stretch of the road, which was under repair.

As it approached the Patrick Bridge in the dark, “a surviving passenger recalled the driver yelling at them to hold on because the bus had lost its brakes,” Go said by telephone.

The Dimple Star Transport bus was traveling from San Jose, Occidental Mindoro to Manila at the time.

“Then the passenger remembered everything tumbling around inside the bus, he heard a loud crash and he passed out,” Go said.

The bus slammed into some stone barricades on the roadside ahead of the bridge, and then flew off the road down a ravine, which was 15 to 20 meters deep. The impact killed the driver and most passengers in the front rows of seats, he said.

An infant near the front survived after a relative embraced the baby and the seat cushion prevented him from being pinned to death, said Go, who inspected the accident site.

Photographs showed the green and white bus lying precariously on the edge of a dry canal at the bottom of the ravine. Rescuers peered into the bus cabin with flashlights attached to their foreheads.

Investigators will try to determine if a brake failure or other mechanical problem caused the accident, Go said, adding there were no skid marks on the road where the bus plunged off the cliff.

Highway fatalities are alarmingly high in the Philippines due to poor law enforcement, dilapidated vehicles, and a lack of safety features such as signs and railings, especially in far-flung provinces.

Poe pushed for the passage of a bill creating a “National Transportation Safety Board,” or NTSB, that would look into crashes.

“We need a dashboard of solutions to stop this bloody mess on our streets,” she said. “This would range from a preventive and preemptive garage inspection of public vehicles to strict driver’s licensing [and] the use of devices like GPS and speed delimiters.”

Citing a 2014 Philippine Statistics Authority report, Poe said vehicular crashes have killed 43,853 people.

“The missing link in these accident prevention measures is the NTSB,” she said. “There is a jumble of transport agencies but there is no ‘go-to agency’ that will be able to unravel and explain major transportation accidents.”

She added: “There is a general pattern to be perceived in each of the accidents, and unless we fail to piece them together, they will occur.”/PN
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