The driver of the > ill-fated school bus was speaking on his mobile phone while the vehicle was crossing the unmanned level crossing near Masaipet on Thursday morning, resulting in the bus being rammed by the Nanded passenger train, railway authorities said.
As many as 20 school children and the driver were killed in the ghastly incident. Twenty-three children were injured, 14 of them critically in the incident.
The bus usually took another manned crossing a little distance away everyday, P.K. Srivastava General Manager, South Central Railway, who was at the accident spot, said.
The single track runs straight for miles, parallel to National Highway 44 and there was no way either the locomotive pilot or the bus driver could cite ‘obstruction of vision’ as the reason.
Railway officials said the school, situated about three km away from the spot, started its classes at 9.15 a.m. every day and that was why the driver was speeding. “A delay of a few minutes does not matter. Just because the driver did not wait, these young lives were lost,” Mr. Srivatsava said.
As recently as in the first week of June, the SCR organised a special safety drive at unmanned level crossings (UMLCs) with education of road users to prevent accidents. In the past four years, the SCR has been on a drive, removing 514 UMLCs of the total of 1,100 in the SCR’s jurisdiction. Currently, 640 of them remain.
“We are ready with an action plan to completely remove each and every UMLC by the financial year 2016-17. Till such time, we earnestly appeal to road users to exercise caution. Stop, Look and Go is a basic rule that will prevent such accidents. We are committed to removing every UMLC,” he reiterated.
Asked about the number of accidents at UMLCs, the senior officer said that it was declining. “In the year 2011-12, five accidents took place, followed by three in 2012-13 and one in 2013-14. This year this is the first and we are sparing no effort to see that such accidents do not recur,” Mr. Srivastava stated.
