Armyman dies as bus with 70 rams truck on Yamuna Expressway

NOIDA: A 25-year-old Armyman died and eight others suffered grievous injuries when the sleeper bus they were travelling in crashed into an overloaded truck that was moving slowly ahead of it on the Yamuna Expressway at the break of dawn on Tuesday.
The police station at Rabupura received a call around 5.15am that an accident had taken place on the expressway near Mohammadabad Kheda village.
After hitting the truck, the private sleeper bus - which was carrying around 70 passengers from Gorakhpur to Ludhiana - broke the iron railing along the edge of the expressway and toppled over onto the marshy land below.
"When our team reached the accident spot, we found that the bus had veered off the expressway onto the ground below. It had crashed into a truck carrying heavy rocks. After ramming the truck from behind, the bus driver failed to control the vehicle and it turned turtle," said Vishal Pandey, additional deputy commissioner of police.
It took around 45 minutes to bring the trapped passengers from inside the bus. The police team had to cut into the metal frame of the vehicle using gas cutters.
Nine passengers who suffered grievous injuries were rushed by cops to Kailash Hospital and Government Institute of Medical Sciences in Greater Noida.
Lavi Kumar, who was from Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, died during treatment at Kailash Hospital. "He was a sepoy in the Army and attached to the Dogra infantry regiment. The others who were injured are now stable. We have informed the family members of the Armyman. The body would be handed over to them after an autopsy. We are investigating how the accident took place," said Raj
Kumar Chauhan, the station house officer of Rabupura police station.
The injured passengers were identified as Durgawati, Dinesh, Sumit, Pankaj Tripathi, Sunil Gupta, Ram Prakash, Om Prakash and Arun.
According to data sourced from the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA), the 165km expressway saw 420 accidents through last year, leaving 135 people dead and 949 injured.
In 2020, 128 people died and 1,013 were injured in 509 accidents on the speedway. The year before it, there were 560 accidents and 195 deaths.
Overworked drivers falling asleep behind the wheel - especially during the winters - has been a major cause for accidents on the expressway, accounting for 45% of the crashes. From time to time, the authorities take measures to help drivers stay awake at night - setting up restrooms near toll plazas and offering tea and other refreshments to them.
The YEIDA data shows that speeding and violation of traffic norms account for 19% and 11% of the expressway accidents, respectively. Vehicles parked along the speedway, sudden bursting of tyres and drunk driving are some of the other concerns for the police.