Tragic Cliff

On Wednesday, August 12, around 7:10 a.m., on the seventh kilometer of the Podgorica-Kolasin road in Radusa, the Mercedes bus with TG 11-389 registration plates, ownership of the Vest Comp. agency from Belgrade, behind whose steering wheel Dragan Gojkovic was sitting, hit a boulder on the right side of the road, and then skidded across to the other side and crashed into the Moraca river bed. At the moment when this article is being written (Wednesday afternoon) all that is known is that eighteen people have died and that 20 passengers have sustained injuries in that bus whose remains were found in the Moraca canyon at the spot which some refer to as Bioca close to Podgorica, and the investigative judge as the curve “at Brcanovic’s house”.

The picture which VREME’s journalist describes on the spot was horrendous, it is clearly evident that the bus had crumpled while tumbling over and in certain places the roof is practically touching the floor. No signs of brake skidding can be seen at the scene of the accident, although a special asphalt has been placed on that spot which should enable skidding. According to the statement given by the injured Nemanja Maric who sat close to the driver, the accident occurred when the driver bent down to adjust the radio station. The bus hit a boulder with all force, glass began to fly. Nemanja remembers, even while he was in a state of shock, that the bus began to crash down towards, as he says, a river. From the outside, it seems that the bus was speeding since the vehicle, swaying from the impact after colliding with the boulder and rushing towards the other side without control, totally ruptured the metal embankment which lined the abyss.

The investigative judge, Zarko Savkovic, could only state in that first moment that for now, due to unknown reasons, the bus crashed into the Moraca canyon from a height of 30 meters.

HELP: Members of the Montenegro’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP), the Yugoslav Army and doctors and medical help of the Clinical-Hospital Center in Podgorica helped to salvage passengers and to extract the bodies of the dead and injured from the totally wrecked bus at the bottom of the canyon. Ivan Djurisic, director of Podgorica’s Medical Center claims that four first aid teams arrived at the scene of the accident around 7:30 a.m. and that superhuman efforts were employed to help the injured. The time span in which first aid arrived seems to be satisfactory and the effort of the rescuers must have been extreme. According to certain reports, none of the passengers remained uninjured. According to the statement of Vuk Boskovic, Montenegro’s assistant minister for public safety, special units of Montenegrin police forces reacted speedily.  The policemen were extracting people from the wrecked bus in the midst of a horrendous atmosphere of cries, screams and calls. Amongst the victims were 10 men, one woman and one child. Two children are injured, while preliminary tests do not show signs of internal bleeding nor fractures nor any other abnormalities which would demand urgent surgery. Three passengers were in a critical state. The driver of the bus, Dragan Gojkovic, died on the way to the hospital.  Ivana Demirovic, Sasa Milovanovic, Dragoljub Maric, Milica Markovic, Nemanja Maric, Jelena Maric, Goran Mladenovic, Marina Sarlic, Tomislav Vasic, Natasa Petrica, Ivana Petrica and Nikolina Petrica are hospitalized in Podgorica’s Clinical Center. The passengers of this bus were headed for Budva, where they planned to spend their holidays. A state of emergency has been introduced in Podgorica’s Clinical Center, especially in the departments of microsurgery, surgery and orthopedics, and operations were immediately undertaken.  The citizens of Podgorica rushed to the hospital in large numbers to donate their blood and were therefore subsequently asked not to create chaos.  Montenegro’s Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic and Jusuf Fetahovic, Montenegro’s Traffic Minister, visited the injured in the hospital, while Leposava Milicevic and Dragan Todorovic, Serbian Ministers of Health and Traffic, immediately set out for Podgorica from Belgrade.

The accident in Bioca is the second large accident with extremely tragic consequences in the course of this summer. In Novi Sad 11 people died in a tragic accident on July 26 and 46 were injured when a large truck with Ivangrad registration plates, loaded with bricks, crashed into a bus of the City Transportation Company of Novi Sad, which was transporting passengers to Temerin.  That accident occurred on the crossroads Belgrade-Subotica and Novi Sad-Temerin probably because the truck with trailer bearing Ivangrad registration plates passed through a red light and hit the left flank of the city bus, which was full of passengers. The driver and second driver of the truck, Mirsad Hot and Alen Cikotic, ran from the spot of the accident, and subsequently turned themselves in to the Novi Sad police station. It was ascertained on the spot that the driver had no alcohol in his blood. Shortly after that accident in New Belgrade, on the corner of Nikole Tesla Boulevard and Tresnjin Cvet Street, the cause of a serious accident was a faulty traffic light. Traffic policemen claimed that they had reported the broken down light to Belgrade Put, however it was not repaired in due time.

ANOTHER KOSOVO: People are dying in our traffic accidents almost as much as in Kosovo - stated the head of the department of administration of traffic police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia, colonel Radojko Cvetkovic, who stated at the end of July that this year 30.218 traffic accidents occurred in Serbia in which 601 people died and 8.184 were injured. According to MUP’s Colonel Radojko Cvetkovic, those most endangered in traffic are drivers (died 200 or 33.2 percent from the total number of killed), followed by pedestrians, passengers and bike riders.

In traffic accidents, 31 children were killed, while 936 children were injured. Statistics can be wrong. According to police data, in comparison to the same period last year, the number of traffic accidents is down by 5.78 percent, the number of those killed by 7.68 percent and those injured by 5.58 percent. Montenegro’s statistics are similar, although a bit more dramatic. In this republic in the first six months 77 people were killed, and 700 were seriously or slightly injured. Despite the numerous extra controls by the police, the number of accidents had risen in the last period. Certain analysis claimed that the reason for this could be found in the large number of new drivers in Montenegro and the bad technical state of the vehicles.

SUMMER RISKS: This holiday season was jinxed or perhaps that is the usual tribute of the holiday euphoria - judging by the fact that in July there was an average of more than 30 accidents per day in Serbia - for only one week, from July 13-19, 215 accidents occurred in which 27 people were killed and 149 people were seriously or slightly injured.

CERTAIN SENTENCE: The most frequent reasons for these accidents are speeding (37.2 percent of the accidents), irregular turning and U-turning, ignoring priority regulations, irregular overtaking but also (in 4.7 percent of the cases) the psycho-physical states of the traffic participants. Some of these reasons could have played a part in this accident as well. In August hundreds of buses head for Montenegro, more or less in poor condition, they drive non-stop down a road which is unfavorable for driving. Some drivers say that driving down the so-called Ibarska highway reminds them of “a certain conviction”, a poor road, holes, fast overtakes. Traffic reports say that the condition of the highways in Montenegro are somewhat better than in Serbia, and that the conditions are fairly bad in the Pozarevac and Valjevo regions. Paradoxically, it is somewhat better in the vicinity of larger cities, where, due to the traffic congestion, roads are maintained somewhat better, while in places further from the larger cities, the asphalt is cracked, roads are full of holes, bumps and all sorts of traps of this never never land.

There has been talk for some time now of the necessity of building a highway from Belgrade to the coast, however that project is connected to some future happier times, when this country becomes a member of the world and when the main roads become a subject of concessions. Certain experts believe that that project shall evolve primarily by constructing smaller parts close to the larger cities - in that context the road from Podgorica to the coast would have top priority.