Amazing escape as bus lands on car
A PORT Elizabeth woman was counting her lucky stars yesterday that she managed to walk away relatively unscathed after a bus landed up perched precariously on the side of her upended car.
The Kamma Park mom had just dropped her three sons off at Kabega Park Primary School and was on her way home to get changed for work when an Algoa Bus sideswiped her Suzuki Swift and came to rest on top of the car.
The accident happened at the intersection of Northumberland and Van Der Stel streets in Kabega Park shortly before 8am.
Dianne Els, 47, said the magnitude of what had happened had started sinking in only after she had been taken to St George’s Park Hospital for X-rays.
“I was standing still at the traffic circle and saw the bus, but didn’t pay much attention to it. Only when it was on top of [her car] did I realise what had happened.
“I don’t know if the driver took the corner too wide or what happened exactly – it’s all a bit weird and bizarre.”
Els said she felt very lucky and very fortunate to have walked away with only minor injuries.
Algoa Bus Company chief executive Sicelo Duze confirmed that the driver had been speeding.
When the bus hit Els’s vehicle on the driver’s side, the car flipped over and ended up against a traffic signal pole.
Els said: “I think the car and the pole helped prevent me from sustaining further injuries.
“It’s weird – you sit now and think ‘sh*t, I walked away from that’.”
Her husband, Karel, who was in East London on business, rushed home when he heard the news.
“I am very glad the kids weren’t in the car with me,” Els said.
She had to be taken out the back of the car after emergency personnel were unable to break the front windscreen to free her.
Her seatbelt was cut before she was pulled from the car.
“While I was lying there, I kept thinking that I was going to be taken to hospital without having showered first.
“At least I wasn’t in my pajamas,” she quipped.
Metro Emergency Medical Services head Brenhan Metune said the bus had been carrying about 17 passengers, mainly children.
None of the passengers were injured. “The woman driver of the car sustained minor injuries and was taken to St George’s Hospital [while] the driver of the bus was taken to Greenacres Hospital,” Metune said.
Police spokesman Captain Johan Rheeder said police were investigating a case of reckless and negligent driving.
Duze said the bus was fitted with cameras. After the accident, it had been taken to the traffic department for testing.
“There was nothing faulty with the bus,” he said.
He conceded that the woman bus driver had been speeding.
“The driver had just come from training over a month ago.
“She was speeding and lost control of the bus,” Duze said.