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Clifford Lo

Vehicle rams back of broken-down truck after switching lanes

A passenger died after being thrown from the top deck of a bus in a three-vehicle crash in Kwai Chung yesterday.

Two other passengers were thrown out of the vehicle and badly hurt, and a further 18 suffered lesser injuries.

The  Kowloon Motor Bus double-decker  slammed into a container truck that had broken down in Kwai Chung Road at 10.30am. A second truck then hit the back of the bus. The crash  broke open the front of the bus.

Siu Man-tin, 36, his sister Siu Man-sin, 46, and Cheng Ying-cheung, 52,  were thrown from the bus and taken to  Princess Margaret Hospital. The younger Siu died last night. The other two were listed as serious. Mr Cheng's eight-year-old son was also critically injured.

A 22-year-old woman was in stable condition in Yan Chai Hospital. The rest were discharged after receiving treatment.

KMB said the bus driver, 25, who was unhurt,  was suspended from duties pending an internal investigation.

The Tuen Mun-bound bus  was switching  lanes on the five-lane Kwai Chung Road outside Container Terminal No4 when the accident occurred.

The pile-up disrupted traffic for more than two hours, with queues on Kwai Chung Road reaching back 1km  to Mei Foo Sun Chuen.

'When the bus driver saw the container truck in front broken down in the second lane, he braked and swerved to its right, but ploughed into the right side of the truck,' said Senior Inspector Kiang Kwok-ming, of New Territories South traffic unit.

He said  the second truck  failed to  stop in time and slammed into the back of the bus.

The container truck driver, who was unhurt, said the crash happened about five minutes after his vehicle broke down. He said he had turned on the truck's hazard lights  to alert  other drivers.

'At the time of the incident, I was inside the  cabin trying to contact a garage,' he said. 'Suddenly, there were two loud bangs and my truck shook badly.

'When I got out, I found three injured people lying on the road.  They were thrown out from the upper deck of the bus. They suffered serious injuries and they were bleeding.'

Another police officer at the scene said the  windscreen and several  seats were also thrown  from the upper deck. 'Some bus passengers were thrown out of their seats and others were bleeding from their heads or mouths after they were rammed into the seats in front of them,' he said.

Superintendent Law King-fu  said evidence suggested the bus driver did not watch the road carefully while changing lanes. He said the second truck was apparently following too close as well.

The site of the crash was not a traffic black spot,  he said.

The  bus, which was bought for about $2 million from Britain in 1999,  passed its monthly inspection on July 1. It is among about 2,300 buses that  do not have seat belts.

The KMB spokeswoman said 1,737 vehicles bought since 2001  are  equipped with seat belts, but   passengers  are not required to wear them.



Bus passenger dies after being thrown from top deck