28 killed in Swiss tunnel crash
- Thread starter TitanSound
- Start date
spliff
New Member
It looks like extremely bad tunnel design.
The coach appears to have travelled along the right hand wall of the tunnel
and collided head-on with the concrete wall that provides emergency access.
That wall should surely have been painted yellow and black diagonal stripes or something.
For the driver it looks more like the back of a green coach in front.
So many dead and all survivors injured. It is very sad.
The coach appears to have travelled along the right hand wall of the tunnel
and collided head-on with the concrete wall that provides emergency access.
That wall should surely have been painted yellow and black diagonal stripes or something.
For the driver it looks more like the back of a green coach in front.
So many dead and all survivors injured. It is very sad.
bi0boy
Power User
That was my first thought when I read that too. You'd have thought the Swiss would know about road safety and tunnels.
TheHoodedClaw
acknowledging ur soup leg
I caught a clip of the mangled coach on the news, and wondered how it got so damaged in a tunnel with no other vehicles involved. That pic up there provides the answer.
Yeah I think it was a 100kph speed limit although the bus should have been going slower then that. Things happen to drivers at the wheel, they have heart attacks, they fall asleep, they get something in their eye, there are even a lot of accidents each year caused by drivers sneezing. There is no way that there should be a shear wall like that just there, that is a very poor design of road.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
TitanSound
Mr Beardy Drummer
bi0boy
Power User
Apparently according to a BBC hack it is supposedly a modern safe design with uni-directional running and crash barriers etc.
The wall it hit was at the end of an "escape lane" which looks to have been nothing more than an extended lay-by. Perhaps it was intended to be a solid concrete wall so as to stop vehicles that have hopefully slowed on entering the escape lane from re-entering the traffic flow. However it's clearly a bad design, and every traffic engineer should be able to see that.
Andrew Hertford
Chocolate Jesus
Both my kids seem to be off on school coach trips in Europe at least once a year and there's always a nagging worry in the back of my mind too.
This is so desperately sad, so many children dying together in such a terrible way. It's heartbreaking.
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
Horrible thing to hear first thing in the morning.That does not compare to the horror of those poor families.
Col_Buendia
sort code
As a parent this sort of news story makes my blood run cold, especially as our 4yr old heads off to his school everyday in a little minibus. Heartbreaking.
The pic of the green wall in the tunnel seems incomprehensible to me. How could that ever have been put there?
The pic of the green wall in the tunnel seems incomprehensible to me. How could that ever have been put there?
Had a look on one of the German newspaper websites: All the children were strapped in as required by (Oberstaats?) lawyers, but the momentum on impact was great enough to tear the seats from their fixing to the floor, so they died anyway.
TitanSound
Mr Beardy Drummer
weltweit
Well-Known Member
That might explain why in one of the video pieces someone said that all the kids arms and legs were broken.
One of the surviving girls said she got thrown forwards and wedged between 2 seats. And it wouldn't help that the crash would have happened too suddenly for anyone to have a chance of bracing as you would before crash landing (if there's time).
weltweit
Well-Known Member
It is a pretty horrendous accident all round. Their schools and neighbourhoods are going to be devastated. Some of the parents are being bused out to Switzerland at the moment, they still don't know which kids were killed and which not.
My child is already talking about a skiing outing their school is arranging, very expensive but critically by coach!!
My child is already talking about a skiing outing their school is arranging, very expensive but critically by coach!!
Horrific. The logic of having a lump of concrete that could be crashed into, part-way down a tunnel, does remind me of the un-crash-barriered concrete pillars in that tunnel in Paris as bad design. You can fit speed governors, seat belts, make sure people can't drive for too long, but sadly can't eliminate human frailty or error.
And to weltweit, all ski trips involve a fair bit of coach travel, due to it being impractical to build airports up mountains. Not taking the <anything> here, just pointing out.
Giles..
And to weltweit, all ski trips involve a fair bit of coach travel, due to it being impractical to build airports up mountains. Not taking the <anything> here, just pointing out.
Giles..
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I need to get a hold on just how safe or not coaches are as at the moment I am very concerned when I put anyone related to me on one.
Okay then weltweit, hold onto this: If terrible coach crashes happened all the time, it wouldn't be news and nobody would be shocked.
FWIW two similar coaches (carrying children from the same school) also went through that tunnel on the same day in the same direction before the one which crashed, and they reached their destination safely.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
That tunnel has been there for donkeys years and this is the first accident of its type in it.
To get into that right hand lane the coach did need to mount a curb.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Sure, but just recently a coach went off a road in UK, turned over and killed a lot of its passengers.
They just seem to be in the news a lot recently and they all involve fatalitites.
My thoughts also. We'll probably never know exactly, given that the driver and everyone sat at the front is dead, but having a concrete wall across part of the tunnel doesn't seem good design. Make it at an angle, so no-one can have a head-on, even if the driver has a heart attack! Reminds me of the un-crash-barriered concrete pillars in that tunnel in Paris, which looked stupidly dangerous even before MI6 and Prince Phil allegedly got involved (sorry for bad taste humour).
Giles..
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