Deadly bus trip to Battambang

Last Friday, a bus left Phnom Penh bound for Poipet via Battambang. About two hundred kilometres into its journey it reached Pursat, a provincial capital on National Road 5 and around one hundred kilometres from Battambang.

The wrecked bus sits beside the road in Pursat

It was dark and the coach was apparently traveling at full speed when it pulled out to overtake a parked truck and collided head on with a cement truck traveling in the opposite direction.

The driver of the bus was killed and several people were seriously injured. So far this year, four people have died in passenger bus crashes, and 50 have been injured

 In 2011, 25 people were killed in passenger bus crashes and more than 100 were injured.

Earlier this week the Ministry of Interior called for all bus companies in Cambodia to install “black boxes” in their buses to monitor the “careless” driving it says has resulted in three fatal crashes on the Kingdom’s roads in the past week.

Him Yan, director of the Ministry of Interior’s department of public order, said yesterday the recent spate of high-casualty bus crashes had been caused not by faulty buses but by negligent bus drivers.

“The bus companies always co-operate well with the ministry to check their buses are in good order, but the drivers are so careless,” Him Yan said.

“So we want the companies to put  black boxes in the buses to follow the drivers and know how they are driving, and to check the speed they are driving at as well,” he said.

Him Yan said the ministry planned to crack down on reckless driving and suspend, or shut down, bus companies that were found to have caused traffic accidents.

Representatives from Virak Buntham Express Travel, the operators of the bus that crashed in Pursat, declined to comment. However, Mekong Express bus company administrative manager Sin Sisaket applauded the government’s call for all of the Kingdom’s passenger buses to install a “black box”.

Sin Sisaket said all of the Mekong Express buses had already installed a similar machine of their own initiative to record the speed of the bus and counter bus drivers who “try to tell us a lie, because we can see what is happening during their driving.”

The devices also limit the speed at which the buses can travel.

“We put it with the wheel, so the drivers cannot drive faster than the company-imposed speed limit,” he said.

“We allow them to drive up to 70 or 80 kilometres per hour when they are transporting passengers and that is different from the speed limit from the law traffic, which allows 90 kilometres per hour.”