Five people were slightly injured after a bus accident on line 204 of the capital's public transport on Tsarigradsko Shose Boulevard yesterday.
The vehicle broke the guardrail, entered the oncoming traffic lane and stopped in a concrete barrier. Four of the injured were taken to ISUL, and a 16-year-old girl to “Pirogov“, bTV reported.
Dimitar Manliev was on the bus. He said that he was impressed that he was very old.
„I traveled almost from the very beginning to the „Sveta Anna“ stop. I was traveling in the back and right there I felt a push. The bus started to move in a zigzag. The whole situation lasted 10-15 seconds. The speed seemed to be increasing, there was no attempt to stop“, said Dimitar Manliev.
„I felt that the bus was becoming uncontrollable and that this accident was going to happen. It started hitting the side guardrail. People started shouting, there was stress and panic. At that moment the bus turned sharply to the left, went through the guardrail into the oncoming lane. Fortunately, it managed to stop and stay on the road“, said Manliev.
According to him, there were about 10 people in the vehicle.
“I asked the driver several times what happened. He was in shock, he couldn't give a precise explanation. He said he didn't have brakes. He tried to stop, but he couldn't“, said Dimitar Manliev.
The Sofia Motor Transport Authority explained that the bus passed a technical inspection on July 21. A few days later, it also underwent technical maintenance. Expertise will only show the causes of the accident and whether there was a technical malfunction.
“For very high-intensity roads, such as “Tsarigradsko Shose“, there should definitely be reinforced concrete safety fences in the median strip, not steel ones. As you can see, the steel ones are constantly breaking“, said Eng. Hristo Grozdanov, director of the Institute of Transport Structure.
“The fence is literally broken with a length equal to the width of the bus. That is, there is zero work on the steel safety fence“, he also said.