With 25 people killed in bus accidents in the first three months of this year, Matt Blackwell and Kate Ginn look into why they are so dangerous and what needs to be done
As the clock ticked past midnight on March 1, many of the passengers travelling from Salalah to Dubai by bus would have been settling down for the night. Some had recently taken small meals in the nearby oil town of Fahud, while others could well have been dropping off to sleep, knowing there were still many kilometres to travel before they reached their final destination.
They were wrong.
At around 12.30 in the morning a deafening sound rang through the coach as the vehicle collided head-on with a truck on the road to Ibri. Some people were thrown through windows, while other passengers remained trapped in the wreckage. The deep crimson of blood was everywhere according to the first rescuers on the scene and chaos ensued amid the cries for help from those who managed to retain consciousness.
As dawn broke later that day, shedding light on the site of the accident, it was revealed to be one of complete carnage. Shattered glass, rags, tyres and other debris littered the scene, while the cab of the truck was just a mangled ball of metal, metres away from its load-carrying trailer. Poignantly though, a string of prayer beads was still visible in the twisted metal of the wreck.
As the numbers came in, it was announced that 18 people lost their lives in the crash, while 16 were injured, with wounds ranging from minor to severe, making it one of the worst accidents in recent history.
Two days after the fatal Ibri crash, Adil Hamed and Hamoud Hamed are waiting nervously outside the intensive care unit of Ibri Hospital, waiting for any news or change in the condition of their 27-year-old brother Ahmed, who was in the crash and is now fighting for survival.
On the ward, doctors carefully attend to Ahmed’s injuries as his life hangs in the balance; the only sound audible above the murmuring of the medical staff is the continuous beep of the life-support machines.
Both Ahmed and another Bangladeshi man, also in the crash, are being treated for severe head injuries.
“The condition of the Bagladeshi is serious and is still not stable, but Ahmed is a little better,” says Humaid al Gharibi, one of the nurses in the intensive care unit. “They do not need an operation, it is just a case of treating them and waiting to see what happens.”
Ahmed works in Salalah for the military and was travelling home to Ibri to spend some time with his loved ones.
“The whole family is feeling very sad. Everyone comes during visiting hours to see Ahmed every day,” Adil tells Y.
“We ask the authorities to bring our brother closer to home to work because then he would not have to travel.
“It would be better to make the buses safer, not just for us, but for people in the future.”
Elaborating further on the accident that shocked his family, Hamound explains: “Our uncle heard the news first. He was waiting near the Wali’s office at 1am to meet him [Ahmed]. He was waiting for several hours and became worried. Then he heard the news of the crash through telephone and WhatsApp.
“We don’t know exactly how it happened, but we have heard that the truck driver crossed onto the same side of the bus and hit it.”
Earlier this month, the latest statistics from the Royal Oman Police’s (ROP) Directorate General of Traffic Facts and Figures 2016 revealed that the number of road accidents and deaths dropped considerably in 2015 when compared to the previous year.
There were 6,717 accidents leading to 816 deaths in 2014, compared to 675 deaths and 6,279 accidents last year. While this is undoubtedly progress, the stark truth remains that these statistics still equate to more than 17 road accidents around the country every day and an average of 56 deaths every month. As Humaid says, there are weeks when his hospital will receive and treat victims from road traffic accidents every single day.
Twenty-five people – including several schoolchildren – lost their lives in less than five weeks between the end of January and beginning of March this year alone.
The Ibri crash happened just a handful of kilometres away from where an accident involving a school bus claimed the lives of seven people – four of them schoolchildren – close to Nizwa on January 28. The bus was carrying 33 Indian School Nizwa Class II students back from a field trip to Bahla when it collided with a truck carrying frozen fish as the driver attempted a U-turn at a notoriously dangerous spot on Route 15. Children were thrown around the tumbling vehicle as it rolled several times.
Not a single child on the bus escaped without an injury of some kind. As well as four children, Ruya Aman, Mohammed Shammas, Jaden Jaison and Siya Sabu, aged between seven and eight, three more lives were lost that day; much loved teacher, Deepali Sandip Seth, and both the bus and truck drivers.
Seven weeks to the day, anguished parents are still waiting for an accident report from the Indian Schools Board, which oversees all Indian schools in Oman, about the crash that devastated the school and left a community in mourning.
Feelings of despair and grief are being replaced by ones of anger and deep resentment at a growing feeling the accident and the loss of lives is simply being brushed under the carpet to become just another statistic.
“Parents are very upset and angry. They are now resenting that nothing has happened since the accident,” says Akhilesh Kumar, a parent who is acting as an unofficial spokesman for all the parents involved at Indian School Nizwa.
“It’s more than six weeks now and [we] are still waiting for the enquiry. We feel that we are being ignored or fobbed off. Parents don’t want to forget and forgive. They want justice.”
Akhilesh also works as a senior pharmacist and HOD – Medical Stores at Nizwa Hospital, where the bodies and the injured were taken after the crash. He can still remember the awful sight of ashen-faced parents running around the chaotic wards trying to find out if their child was dead or alive.
Until, or if, the internal report comes out, there won’t be any answers to the most pressing questions, which parents from Indian School Nizwa want answered. These include: “Was the bus fitted with seatbelts? If so, why did the children not wear them and if not, why did the school allow the trip to go ahead, putting the pupils’ lives at risk?” and “What safety checks did the school make on the bus and driver?”
The bus driver was said to be in his late 60s and there are claims that the bus was overcrowded, with a pupil forced to sit on the knee of the teacher, Mrs Deepali.
According to Akhilesh Kumar, several of the parents met with the Ambassador at the Indian Embassy in Muscat on February 18 to discuss their concerns.
One of their, it would seem legitimate concerns, is that the enquiry into the accident is being carried out by the Indian Schools Board and not independent observers, who might give a more objective view.
“We, as the parents, do not trust this enquiry if members of the board are involved,” says Akhilesh, who has a son at Indian School Nizwa and once served on the management committee.
“There should be a separate taskforce with experts who can give a proper independent view.
“Many of us are parents and thinking what shall we do? There’s no enquiry, we’re being ignored and nothing is happening.
“Some parents are talking about going to the public prosecution.”
He claims that a letter signed by hundreds of parents sent to the chairman of Indian Schools’ Board of Directors, Wilson V George, asking about the enquiry’s progress has not had a response.
Y Magazine has also tried to contact Mr George on several occasions, including this week, but have had no response to phone calls, text messages or an emailed list of questions about the enquiry.
Back at the ROP station in Fahud, where the wreckage of the coach is being stored, it is a wonder that anyone made it out alive at all. The investigation into the exact cause of the accident is ongoing and no one was able to tell Y when it may conclude, however, it was said that it will most likely take a “long time”. An ROP source did say that it was the worst accident they had ever experienced in the area.
While the exact set of circumstances that led to the Nizwa bus crash might never be known and families of victims in the Ibri incident will have to wait until the results of the investigation are made public, Mark Atkins, chief examiner (international) for DIAmond Advanced Motorists, a UK-based company that accredits training providers here in Oman and around the world, believes he can already point out some of the key factors at play.
“The training is probably the number one problem in Oman. It is probably not adequate enough,” says Mark, who has a background of 25 years in road safety and has worked in Malaysia, Qatar, Iraq and Eastern Europe. “A lot of bus companies will ensure that their drivers have a licence, but insist on no further training.
“On a long journey like that [Salalah to Dubai], fatigue comes into play, as could the road type, which was unlit and narrow.
“If we understand correctly, the bus driver was trying to avoid a truck that was on his side of the road. That could have been a fatigue issue on the part of the truck, rather than the bus driver doing anything wrong.
“He has said he sounded his horn and flashed his lights three times, but he didn’t say anything about braking.
“There appears to be quite a lot of speeding and impatience. They are very long and monotonous roads [in the Interior]. As a result, speed tends to pick up and concentration drops,” Mark says.
“Most of the people are thinking about time pressure and not about the risks because they do not have the training,” adds Mohammed Hamed al Shuaili, chairman of Safety Cooperation Services (SCS), an accredited private training institute established in 2003 that offers defensive driving tuition among other services.
“People push drivers to hurry, which makes them take short cuts. The Ibri road was 25 minutes shorter compared to the Nizwa route.” But, as Mark is quick to point out, it is a lot more dangerous.
Both Mark and Mohammed admit that the driver training courses for buses and heavy vehicles are not as popular as they should be in Oman. They explain that when a client enforces driver training upon a contractor, they do it because they must. It is rarely a personal choice and there is no incentive to continue professional development and uphold standards.
According to Mark, the journey to safer roads begins with four Es: engineering (is the road and are the vehicles fit for purpose?), education (are the drivers and passengers wearing their seatbelts and aware of the risks of driving?), enforcement (are there speed cameras and regular police patrols?) and encouragement, which comes through road safety adverts and campaigns, something that he believes is severely lacking in Oman.
The string of recent accidents has thrown buses into the spotlight and while there are whispers of change, including the idea of all school buses coming under the regulations of the new-look Mwasalat service among other things, the question has to be asked: how many more innocent people have to needlessly suffer before concrete action is taken?
Since the Ibri crash, officials are said to be discussing ways to make that stretch of road safer. This would include better maintenance, improved lighting and wider hard shoulders along the 214km-long road.
While any steps to reduce risks are laudable, there are some who are asking whether it’s too little too late.
As Daryle Hardie, CEO of Safety First, an independent non-profit road safety organisation in Oman, points out: “It shouldn’t take more accidents and deaths for the authorities to realise that we need a proper bus management system and this can’t keep happening.
“It is time for change. We can point fingers and blame individuals, but it’s a collective group of people and operators that are at fault.”
Oman still holds the dubious honour of one of the worst rates of accidents on the roads in the GCC, a title that surely should be incentive enough for the government and authorities to act.
Awareness seems to be an uphill battle.
Making a call this week, Y discovered that Safety First, which was co-founded in 2012 by Hamed al Wahaibi, Oman’s rally champion, and football star Ali al Habsi, has “closed until further notice”. The news seems to be a sad indictment of the lack of support – financially and otherwise – that road safety groups face. That even the backing of high profile stars was apparently not enough to attract government or corporate funding for such an important cause raises questions of its own.
Safety First’s campaigning work – to reduce the number of traffic accidents and fatalities on the Sultanate’s roads by 50 per cent by 2020 – will continue behind the scenes. Those involved say it is “hibernating” and hopefully will relaunch in the future.
It’s not all doom and gloom, of course. As Daryle Hardie points out, changes are happening, albeit slowly.
“The best news this year is the enforcement of baby seats – long, long overdue,” he says. “We have always said until the ROP make it law, enforce and fine people for not restraining children, we are flogging a dead horse.
“I personally think the ROP are improving their efforts year on year. You see them being a lot more vigilant towards road users that are clearly breaking the law. Plus the implementation of red light cameras and more speed cameras is dramatically changing driving behaviour.”
Among the measures Daryle believes need to be implemented are In Vehicle Monitoring Systems, personal bus monitors, CCTV, seatbelts and cell phone blockers, many of which already used in other countries around the world.
Meanwhile, at the start of the 32nd GCC Traffic Week, which began on March 13, the ROP announced a campaign to curb the use of mobile phones while driving.
Mwasalat are also investing time, effort and money in the proper training of drivers in an attempt to raise the overall standard when it comes to buses on the Sultanate’s roads.
It’s a step forward, but perhaps not far enough for some.
At Indian School Nizwa, the impact of the bus crash continues to reverberate. Children with minor injuries returned last week, while those more seriously injured have not come back and no one knows when, or if, they will.
Four pupils and a teacher will never be coming back.
One child, Nandikta, was discharged recently after spending more than a month in hospital, but the trauma to her head was so severe that she is currently unable to talk and does not recognise her parents, who are considering taking her home to India for specialist treatment.
“The whole school is still traumatised by what has happened,” says Akhilesh Kumar.
“Teachers lost one of their colleagues, the children lost one of the best teachers in the school and we lost four kids.
“Some of the kids who came back last week were still crying and apprehensive. It’s not a time for an enquiry. It’s time for action.”
Timeline of Major Bus Accidents in Oman
October 18. 2010: Three students from Middle East College of Information and Technology in Muscat are killed and 31 injured, three critically, when a tyre burst on their college bus, causing it to lose control and hit a parked car.
March 2011: One student is killed and 45 injured, three of them seriously, when their school bus is hit by a truck at Al Sawadi junction in Barka.
May 2012: Six college students and a driver of the bus they were travelling in are injured when their vehicle collides with a car on Al Draiz Road, Ibri.
November 2012: A 10-year-old student from Indian School Seeb dies and 14 fellow pupils are injured when the school minivan they were travelling in hit a road divider.
November 2013: A six-year-old pupil from Indian School Darsait suffers head injuries after he fell out of the window of a school bus.
January 2014: A school bus carrying Pakistan School Muscat students crashes into a rubbish truck, killing three children and injuring 24, two of them critically.
February 2014: A school bus carrying 37 Indian School Sur pupils crashes head-on into another car, killing the driver and a seven-year-old student on the bus.
April 2014: A bus carrying students from Indian School Wadi Kabir is involved in an accident near the Sheraton signal, injuring four pupils.
October 2014: A school bus skids and overturns in Bidbid, leaving four children with minor injuries.
November 2014: Three students from Indian School Darsait suffer minor injuries when two school buses collide in Ruwi.
May 2015: A university bus with 24 passengers on board overturns after its brakes fail, injuring nine students.
September 30, 2015: A school minibus carrying students from Al Baraeim School collides with a car in Mudhaibi, killing an Omani student and injuring 13 other children.
January 2016: A school bus carrying students from Indian School Nizwa collides with a truck, killing the two drivers, two students and a teacher instantly. Two more pupils die in hospital from their injuries, bringing the death toll to seven.
March 1: 18 die and 16 injured after a bus travelling from Salalah to Dubai smashes head-on with a truck on the Fahud to Ibri road. A saloon car then slammed into the wreckage.
DEATH TOLL: 36
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