After the serious bus accident on Autobahn 9 near Leipzig, the police have announced the identities of three of the four fatalities. A 47-year-old Polish woman, a 20-year-old Indonesian woman living in Berlin and a 19-year-old from Bavaria died in the accident, the police announced on Thursday. Another woman who died at the scene of the accident has not yet been positively identified. A person who was initially reported to the police as having died was in a life-threatening condition, the Leipzig Police Department announced on Wednesday evening. The traffic police inspectorate is conducting an investigation on suspicion of negligent homicide, it said.
A double-decker bus from Flixbus came off the road on the A9 on Wednesday morning and overturned. The police initially spoke of five dead and 20 injured. The evening’s announcement said there were six seriously injured and 29 slightly injured. The investigators initially did not provide any information about the identity, age and gender of the victims.
According to the Flixbus company, there were 53 passengers and two drivers on board the long-distance bus. According to police, the driver who was behind the wheel at the time of the accident is not among the dead. According to the bus company, he had been driving since leaving Berlin at 8 a.m. and had adhered to all driving and rest times.
With the help of belts, the bus was uprighted at midday so that other passengers could be rescued. The event was fenced off by mobile privacy walls. The motorway was temporarily completely closed, but was reopened in the direction of Berlin in the early afternoon. In the direction of Munich it will probably remain closed until the evening. The rescue work could still be ongoing, a police spokesman told the dpa news agency.
Such accidents are shocking, said Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) to the news channel World. “And now it’s about the security forces on site having to clarify the matter and helping the people who urgently need help now.”
Emergency vehicles and rescue helicopters are on the A9 at the scene of the accident.
(Photo: Jan Woitas/dpa)
The provider Flixbus was seriously affected after the accident. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this accident and their families,” said a company spokesman. They are working closely with the local authorities and the rescue workers on site and are doing everything they can to clarify the cause of the accident quickly and completely.
Saxony’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU) expressed his condolences to the relatives of the dead. In addition, “I hope that the injured get better quickly.” Schuster thanked the rescue workers for their professional efforts. He saw in the firefighters’ faces “how difficult these scenes were.”
Modern long-distance buses have good safety precautions
The accident raises safety questions, even though Johannes Hübner, safety expert at the International Bus Tourism Association (RDA), emphasizes that the accident near Leipzig was the first serious long-distance bus accident in 2024. Statistics from the RDA show that coaches have become even safer as a means of transport since the corona pandemic, said Hübner.
This is also due to the fact that the safety precautions on coaches have recently been significantly increased. After all new buses were equipped with lane keeping mechanisms a good five years ago, this year they also have emergency braking assistants. There are also cameras that are intended to give drivers a better view of the traffic. Since the bus involved in the accident was a new model, it can be assumed that it was equipped with the necessary technical aids.
Why the accident nevertheless occurred remains to be clarified. According to Hübner, further improvement in safety is definitely possible, for example by raising awareness about wearing the lap belt. As Hübner says, the bus drivers, especially in new buses from the provider Flixbus, are obliged to play a video after every stop that informs guests about buckling up. In practice, however, such instruction often does not take place.
Aside from safety on and in the bus, the RDA expert would like the focus to be on a larger road safety problem. He blames, among other things, the unsecured lowering of the road for the severity of the accident at the Wiedemar motorway junction. “When I look at the pictures, it is a fatal accident scene where there is an embankment on the right and no guardrail,” said Hübner. As soon as a bus leaves the road, an accident is difficult to prevent due to the height of the vehicle.
There was already a serious bus accident on the A 9 near Bad Dürrenberg in Saxony-Anhalt in 2019. A woman died and several people were injured. In December 2023, a coach also had an accident on the A 9 near Leipzig, leaving several people injured.