Negotiating turn: Three die in Kallar Kahar bus crash

The 10km stretch of motorway through Salt Range has witnessed several accidents in the recent past.

ISLAMABAD:

The accident-prone Salt Range patch of the Lahore-Islamabad Motorway near Kallar Kahar was the scene of another accident on Friday when a bus overturned on the road, killing three passengers and injuring four others.

An eight-year-old girl Erum Shahzadi and a woman Jannat Bibi died on the spot, according to police and rescue officials. One man who was injured critically, died at the District Headquarters Hospital in Chakwal.

The accident occurred when the brakes of the bus failed, according to the National Highways and Motorways Police (NHMP) official Ishtiaq Akbar.



“The bus crashed into the road’s side safety wall and overturned,” Akbar said.

He said the NHMP are investigating the accident to check for speeding and a case has been registered against the bus driver. Initial investigations indicate it was a “technical fault,” even though the fitness certificate of the bus was valid, according to the highway police.

The bus was privately hired by some villagers and, at the time of the accident, it was travelling to the shrine of Peer da Khara near Lilla from Jhang, Akbar said.



“The bus driver missed the Lilla interchange exit to reach the shrine,” he added. “After realising the mistake, he exited back from Kallar Kahar to reach Lilla through the Salt Range.”

The 10-kilometre stretch of the motorway through the hills is a tricky drive with strict, low speed limits. It has witnessed several accidents over the past few years, some of them attributed to mechanical faults but others caused by speeding and sometimes overloading of passenger buses.

Ten people were killed in the same area in a similar accident involving a bus in July 2013. According to the previous reports, 69 people were killed in 16 accidents in 2012.

Even more fatal was a September 2011 accident in which an overcrowded bus carrying children from Faisalabad overturned after skidding off the road. At least 37 school children died in the accident.

Almost all major reported accidents in the area had some form of brakes failure. A July 2013 report published in this newspaper indicated over 200 accidents have occurred at one particular narrow turn in the Salt Range.

Motorway police advise drivers to cover the trek in 25 minutes but they said new drivers often ignore the speed limits. The road safety is sometimes also imperilled by the road’s condition, for which the NHMP officials said they have written to the National Highway Authority.

According to the Motorway authorities, the passengers in Friday’s accident belonged to a village near Chiniot.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2014.