Another coach has crashed, this time in the Alentejo near Almodôvar, Beja, at around 18.30 killing three passengers.
The Renex coach was taking passengers on its usual Algarve:Lisbon route and crashed killing three and injuring 17 including the driver, nine of them are in a serious condition.
The fatalities are two women, one 40 and one 50, and a man also aged 50.
"The nine most serious injuries are not critical," said Cátia Alves of the emergency servievce INEM.
The A2 was closed in both directions for some hours as emergency services attended to the injured.
Alves said that the INEM helicopter based in Loulé and three specialist ambulances were sent, in addition to 10 ambulances, firemen and two teams of psychologists.
The emergency medical post that was used on Wednesday night at the coach accident on the Via do Infante motorway near Paderne again was used to provide immediate assistance to the injured prior to hospitalisation.
By 20.40 the wounded had been transported to hospitals in Beja and Faro, and for those in urgent need, the emergency departments at Castro Verde and Albufeira had been used.
The coach passengers originally were thought all to have been Portuguese nationals but later reports indicate that one of the badly injured passengers is a foreigner.
Renex is another company in the Barraqueiro transport group, owned by Humberto Pedrosa who is the majority shareholder in Gateway, the successful bidder for TAP.
No details have been released yet as to possible reasons for the accident. The driver was not injured seriously and underwent an alcohol test which showed he had not been drinking.
Comments
Conclusions:
1. everybody knows there are no police controls after 18:00
2. everybody - including buses -Always drive far too fast
3. as long as bus drivers are paid "per trip" they will be very dangerous drivers and in some cases even "potential murderers" (like in the latest 2 bus accidents)
What should be done? Making mandatory for all types of "toiurist transports" a SPEED LIMITOR till 120 MAXIMUM ! And DOUBLE ALL FINES for trespassers doing public transports like transfer buses, tourist buses, taxi drivers and all other "yellow fishes" etc.
As many expats soon come to realise from chatting with experienced expats - there is no concept of Duty of Care in Portugal. No private or public sector professional has any understanding that they must give their best to the client. Their best honest impartial service and advice.
What Portuguese coach or taxi company owner or manager would have any arrangement in place that allowed a driver to clock on at the start of their shift and announce 'Look boss. Sorry but I've already been driving my cousins van for hours across the country. I'm dog tired. Please can I just do a couple of hours local short runs tonight - nothing long distance'
So would the answer be 'Of course Manny. No problem - glad you told me. Thanks. Put your feet up in the drivers lounge and I'll get Franny to do the night run to the Santander ferry'
Or - 'Why bother me with this? If that coach doesn't go out I MIGHT lose my job and if you don't drive that coach you WILL lose your job. I can get 10 more drivers here just by picking up the phone. Your choice.'
Can we assume driver tiredness and if so - why ? A telling comment from a survivor on the earlier crash is the passengers screaming to the driver to 'stay on the road'. As though he had dozed off.
The tachograph is unlikely to have been tampered with - but does anyone check how many jobs, and the hours worked already, that the driver had already done that day? Not as a coach driver but as say a delivery driver for the family bakers. Or serving in the family cafe.
Having multiple jobs is common in these less developed countries and was never factored in when calculating the tachograph legislation ... and analysing driver tiredness.