At least 14 people were killed and 12 injured when a bus carrying Indonesian tourists crashed into a billboard in East Java province on Monday morning, police said.
The bus, which was carrying 31 passengers, as well as a driver and an employee of a transport company, crashed into a pole and overturned on the road connecting Mojokerto with Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city.
Metro TV quoted local Disaster Management Agency spokesman Ridwan Mobaron as saying the victims were from Benu, a district near Surabaya, returning from a tourist weekend on the Dieng Plateau, about 400km from the centre. islands of Java.
“Fourteen people were killed and another 19 were seriously or slightly injured,” Mojokerto Police Chief Ruvik Repto Himavan said, adding that the cause of the accident was under investigation.
A Java police spokesman said earlier that the accident was due to driver error. “This accident was caused by human error, the driver was exhausted,” Dermanto, who, like many Indonesians, shares the same name, told Metro TV. Authorities indicated that weather and road conditions were not an issue at the time of the crash. Police said the driver survived and was taken to the hospital for medical attention. This Southeast Asian archipelago has a high rate of fatal accidents, where vehicles are often in disrepair and road infrastructure is in disrepair.
