Two people, one of them a minor, died and another 16 people were injured, three of them seriously, this Friday in an accident involving a regional bus in eastern France, said the authorities of the French department of Ain, which initially reported two deceased minors.
The bus, which was traveling between Lyon and Bourg-en-Bresse, was transporting 43 people, including 15 minors, according to the Bourg-en-Bresse prosecutor’s office, which opened an investigation for road homicide, and specified that one of the fatal victims was just over 18 years old.
The driver, who was injured and hospitalized, has not yet been able to be questioned, indicated the Prosecutor’s Office, which raised the number of injured people in a state of absolute emergency to three. Therefore, the death toll is provisional, according to the authorities.
The accident occurred around 7:00 a.m. (6:00 GMT) on the D22 departmental highway, when the bus left the road and collided with a tree in a ditch, according to the mayor of the town of Lent, Yves Cristin, for reasons still unknown.
The impact site, after a slight curve to the right, did not present any special meteorological difficulties early in the morning, according to witnesses.
“There was some fog and the road was wet. At the scene of the accident there were no major difficulties, just a slight curve. As for the causes of the accident, we do not know what could have happened,” Cristin declared to the media present at the scene of the accident on a road “quite prone” to accidents, usually due to excessive speed.
Excess speed ruled out
But the mayor of Lent, the town where the accident occurred, ruled out, in principle, excessive speed as the cause of this Friday’s accident. “At first glance, it doesn’t seem like that was the cause. For me, what happened,” he said, “is quite inexplicable.”
“In that area, all the accidents we have had have been due to crossing solid white lines or excessive speed,” declared the mayor.
Nor does the president of the Greater Bourg region, Jean-François Débat, explain what could have caused the accident: “The road is wide, although it has a slight inclination and a curve to the right,” he described.
According to a statement from the Ministry of Transport, 102 firefighters, 58 vehicles and 50 gendarmes have been mobilized. Four helicopters and eight SMUR (mobile emergency and resuscitation service) teams have also been deployed.
The Minister of Transport has gone to the scene of the accident
Both the prefect of Ain, Louis-Xavier Thirode, and the Minister of Transport, Philippe Tabarot, plan to travel to the scene of the accident.
“There has been an accident involving a school bus in Ain. I am going to go there immediately,” declared Tabarot at the Lyon station in Paris, during the inauguration of the new TGV M high-speed train, on which he was going to travel to Marseille but on which he was finally unable to get on.
“Following the serious bus accident that occurred in Lent, I am heading to the scene,” Tabarot declared on his social networks.
For his part, the French Minister of Education, Édouard Geffray, expressed his solidarity with the students affected by the bus accident and conveyed the support of the Executive to the families.
“I want to have a thought for these students and their families. When our students, our children, are victims of accidents of this nature, it is always a very difficult test,” declared the minister.
The authorities activated the departmental operational center to coordinate the intervention of the different emergency services and organizations involved in managing the crisis.
