More must be done to improve road safety
A HEAVY-DUTY TRUCK carrying a dismantled tower crane crashed into a line of 31 automobiles at a toll station on the Lanzhou-Haikou expressway in the suburb of Lanzhou, Northwest China's Gansu province, on Saturday evening. By Sunday morning, 15 people were confirmed dead and 44 injured, among whom 10 are severely wounded. China Daily reporter Li Yang comments:
The police said the cause of the accident was the failure of the truck's brakes after successive downhill slopes, and the driver, who was using the road for the first time, panicked and failed to notice the runaway truck lane.
That the wreckage spread over 100 meters or so speaks volumes about the magnitude of destruction, which could have been avoided if the driver had remained calm enough to steer the truck onto the runaway truck lane.
