Taiwanese investigators weighing speeding, possible driver fatigue as causes of bus crash that killed 33

Taiwanese investigators are checking whether the driver of a tour bus that flipped over killing 33 people in the island’s worst road accident in decades was overworked.

The family of the driver, Kang Yu-hsun, who died in the crash, said he had been working hard throughout the Lunar New Year holiday, a peak travel time. But the company that arranged the tour said Kang was given a rest just hours before the accident.

The bus with 44 people on board was returning to Taipei after a day-long visit to Wuling Farm in Taichung on Monday night when it failed to navigate a long curving exit ramp and toppled over the guardrail onto its side, police said.

Kang, tour guide Hsiao Ju-chin and 28 passengers were killed in the crash. Two others were pronounced dead at hospital and an elderly man who was in intensive care died on Tuesday. Eleven others are listed as injured.

Rescuers later described the scene as gruesome. “It was like a hell with body parts of some victims scattered around the bloodstained bus, whose top had been torn off when it hit the ground against the hillside,” one emergency worker said.