Police search for taxi driver after 5-vehicle pile-up near Hong Kong’s Tseung Kwan O Tunnel leaves 93 injured
- At least a third of the injured are primary school students who were on a class trip
- Police say initial investigation shows crash caused by careless lane switching by taxi driver
Hong Kong police have launched a hunt for a taxi driver accused of switching lanes carelessly and causing a five-vehicle pile-up near Tseung Kwan O Tunnel that left 93 people injured.
A third of the casualties in the Friday accident were primary school children on a class trip.
The ages of those hurt ranged from eight years to 84. One man was in serious condition at United Christian Hospital while 43 were listed as stable in eight hospitals on Friday evening.
The accident happened when the vehicles were shunted into each other on the first lane of the three-lane carriageway near the entrance of the Tseung Kwan O Tunnel.
Police said early investigations showed that the crash, which happened just before 1pm, was caused by a careless lane change by a taxi driver, who moved from a slip road on the Kwun Tong Bypass to the first lane of Tseung Kwan O Tunnel Road.
“Other vehicles could not stop in time, causing a collision,” Senior Inspector Lee Pok-kit of the Kowloon East traffic unit said.
The taxi’s manoeuvre forced a green minibus and two coaches in the same lane to slow down, but a truck and two other coaches behind them failed to stop in time, which caused the collision.
