It is Certain: Human Error caused the Struma Highway Crash of the Burned Bus with 45 Victims

"It was definitely established - from the evidence and expertise that the tragedy of the Struma highway was caused by the driver's behavior. Only his behavior is the reason for this situation to arise and for the accident to develop, which ends with this result." This is what investigator Mladen Petrov told bTV today.

Tragedy on "Struma" Highway: Passenger Bus Caught Fire, Leaving 45 Dead Including Children

Two hours after midnight on November 23, returning from a trip to Turkey, a Besa Trans travel agency bus carrying 52 passengers from North Macedonia, most of them asleep, crashed into the guardrail of the Struma highway near the village of Bosnek and exploded in fire. The bus burned down. Only seven people survived.

It was unequivocally established that there were no flammable liquids in the bus.

"Directing the bus away from the active lane and hitting it in the guardrail has led to the penetration and destruction of structural elements, compression of the tank, compression of its contents. This is accompanied by an abundant scattering of sparks caused by friction, which has reached the required temperature and pressure to ignite the fuel," says Petrov.

Visibility was not impaired, Petrov said, refuting suggestions that poor markings on the Struma highway may have led to the accident. "Indeed, the horizontal marking, the side marking, has faded slightly, but it is not invisible. The middle, center line that separates the strips is quite bright and certainly visible," said the investigator.

A review of the opinion of the investigative team is pending. "The victims, the relatives of the dead and the surviving passengers are to be involved. Our opinion that there is no...