The two victims of yesterday’s car crash on Almancil’s Troto bypass have been identified as a British couple who had been on holiday in the Algarve.
The head-on crash at dawn on Thursday morning, happened as the Britons were returning to Faro airport to catch their return flight.
Traffic was diverted from the new bypass for three hours as rescue services worked to cut the bodies from the wreckage. The driver was a 68-year-old man and his partner, a 56-year-old woman.
Three Portuguese men were injured in the crash, two seriously, thought now to have occurred as the British driver’s Citroën Elysée was being driven on the wrong side of the road, possibly imagining the road was a one-way dual carriageway or simply used to driving on the left-hand side of the road.
The crash happened on a curve with little visibility and was in a 'single white line' section of the road, denoting no overtaking.*
The accident happened shortly after 06:00 when the Citroën drove straight into an oncoming pick-up truck.
The British couple died immediately in a crash that was so violent that their bodies had to be cut from the wreckage. The three occupants of the other vehicle, aged between 46 and 67, were treated at the scene and later transported to Faro hospital where they remained throughout the day. Two of them were seriously injured.
The emergency operation involved 32 people, including INEM emergency medical staff, Bombeiros, road company workers and the GNR.
* see comments section below
