THE stubbornness of the Lagos State BRT Staff Bus Driver when he refused to wait for few minutes for the train to cross, caused a fatal accident early Thursday morning leading to the death of six Lagos State Civil Servants with 82 others sustaining various degree of injuries.
Earlier, residents watched in shock how an oncoming train collided with a staff bus, filled with passengers en route to the Alausa Secretariat, Ikeja, from Ikotun, pushing them metres away before coming to a halt.
Saturday PUNCH gathered that the driver of the BRT had veered into the rail track despite signs from the level crossing flag bearers and other motorists urging him not to do so as a train was oncoming.
“It all happened in a split second. One moment, the bus was waiting. Another moment, he had ‘jumped’ onto the level crossing, causing a crash,” an eyewitness, simply identified as Chioma, told one of our correspondents.
Corroborating Chioma’s claim, a Chief Mechanical Engineer and Lagos District Manager, Nigeria Railway Corporation, Mr Augustine Arisa, said the train which collided with the Lagos State Staff BRT pushed it 100m further before finally making a stop because of the high velocity the train came with.
Arisa noted that around 7.50am, he received a distress call from one of the train drivers of the NRC, alerting his office to a train-bus accident at the Shogunle Level Crossing.
He said, “On further interaction, we found out that the Level-Crossing Keeper was there. The LCK is the man with the red and yellow flags at all times at the level crossing.
“If he gives you the red flag, you are to stop. If he gives you the yellow flag, you are to move with caution. If he gives the yellow flag to the train driver, that means he has asked the train driver to start coming.
“With that, the train driver has the confidence that the rail is clear for him to drive through. This simply means all buses should wait and not move till the yellow flag is given to them. With that, the train driver has the confidence that the rail is clear for him to drive through.”
The district manager also stated that the BRT driver veered off from where other buses were waiting and entered the track, ignoring the red flag by the level crossing keeper.
He said, “Before the train driver could stop, he had already hit the vehicle (BRT) and carried it to a distance of about 100 metres before finally stopping. This is because the train cannot stop immediately.”
He further emphasized that no one should be on the rail track for whatever reason, adding that anyone seen on the rail track is an intruder.
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