12 killed as passenger grabs steering wheel
JAKARTA: Twelve people were killed and dozens more injured in an Indonesian traffic accident on Monday ater a passenger tried to wrest control of a bus steering wheel following an argument with the driver, police said.
The accident happened at around 1:00am on Monday when the coach swerved into oncoming traffic on a toll road in West Java, smashing into two cars and causing a truck to roll.
Some 43 people were injured in the multi-vehicle accident and rushed to hospital, police said.
“In the middle of the journey, a passenger atempted to forcibly take control of the steering wheel... and the bus then lost control,” Atik Suswanti, the head of the Majalengka police traffic unit, told AFP. The bus driver was killed, according to authorities, while the 29-year-old passenger was severely injured.
Traffic accidents are common in the Southeast Asian archipelago, where vehicles are oten old and poorly maintained and road rules regularly flouted.
In an unrelated development, boeing executives apologised on Monday to airlines and families of victims of 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, as the US plane maker struggles to regain trust of regulators, pilots and the global traveling public.
Kevin Mcallister, CEO of Boeing’s commercial aircrat, told reporters at the Paris Air Show that “we are very sorry for the loss of lives” in the Lion Air crash in October and Ethiopian Airlines crash in March. A total of 346 people were killed.
Mcallister also said “I’m sorry for the disruption” to airlines from the subsequent grounding of all Max planes worldwide, and to their passengers facing summer travel. He stressed that Boeing is working hard to learn from what went wrong but wouldn’t say when the plane could fly again.
Other Boeing executives also stressed the company’s focus on safety and condolences to victims’ families.
Investigations are underway into what happened, Members of the Indonesian navy’s elite team demonstrate during an anti-terror exercise at the Juanda Naval Airbase in Sidoarjo on Monday.
Agence France-presse though it’s known that angle-measuring sensors in both planes malfunctioned, alerting anti-stall sotware to push the noses of the planes down. The pilots were unable to take back control of the planes.
Safety is on many minds at the Paris Air Show, where the global economic slowdown and trade tensions between the US and other powers are also weighing on the mood.