The worst bus accident recorded in Galicia in the last 37 years, in which seven of the eight passengers of the bus that fell into the Lérez River (Pontevedra) on Christmas Eve 2022 lost their lives, will not have criminal consequences for the driver, after been under judicial scrutiny ever since. The investigating court number 1 of Pontevedra has decided to file the case against the driver after concluding that the direct cause of the accident is not clear if it was excessive speed. The judge does point to the meteorological factors that that night turned the Pedre viaduct, in the town of Cerdedo-Cotobade (Pontevedra), into a pond of water, which caused the vehicle to lose control and fall to the riverbed. channel from a height of 29 meters.
A year and a half after the accident, the investigating judge has agreed to “freely dismiss the case, assessing that there is no serious or less serious recklessness on the part of the bus driver and that the parties must in any case go to civil proceedings,” Sources from the Superior Court of Xustiza of Galicia reported this Wednesday.
The fact that the tachograph did not shed light on the causes of the accident as it was damaged by water has led the instructor to rule that there are no conclusive indications of possible recklessness on the part of the driver. The opinion thus contradicts the expert reports of the Civil Guard that point to excessive speed, limited in that section to 80 kilometers per hour. This factor had placed the person under investigation as allegedly responsible for seven crimes of reckless homicide, a qualification that has always been ruled out by the Pontevedra Prosecutor’s Office, which, in any case, was inclined from the beginning to interpret the facts as a minor offense that would entail a fine.
The investigation was slower than expected because the tachograph recovered by Civil Guard divers the day they lifted the bus from the river bed could not serve as conclusive evidence. The damage caused to the device after spending four days underwater did not allow us to determine the actual speed at which the bus was traveling at the time of the accident. No data was received at the passenger company’s headquarters either, as the bus’s positioning signal was lost, probably due to electrical failures in the control panel, anomalies that were noticed by the driver seconds before falling into the river.
Traffic accident experts analyzed the remains of the bus – 12 tons of scrap iron and bodywork – and carried out a simulation to reconstruct the accident. They determined the speed by finding the average of the previous four days in which the bus made that same trip. Thus, the opinion concluded that he was traveling at about 90 kilometers per hour and, therefore, he exceeded the speed limit of 80 when entering the Pedre bridge. However, the driver himself and the passenger who survived stated that the speed was normal and that the incessant rain accumulated on the road, the lightning and the poor visibility caused the bus to make aquaplaning and rushed over the bridge.
The expert report recognized that the trip data of the bus that covered the line between Lugo and Vigo on the afternoon of Christmas Eve reflected an average speed of 66 km/h, which did assume that the driver had changed the speed. in some sections of the route.
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A conflictive point on the N-541
Given this lack of specificity, the judge has ruled out excessive speed as a determining cause of the fatal accident. It concludes that if it is not known at what speed the driver was traveling at that moment, but it is known that the average gear during the trip from the last stop was 66 kilometers per hour, it cannot be said that at the point of the accident he would not have slowed down. in the face of “the very adverse weather and road conditions.” In fact, the Civil Guard report points to the deteriorated state of the asphalt at this point on the N-541 and the poor weather conditions, since the closest station collected a volume of rainfall of “torrential intensity.”
Thus, the judge adds that “if the efficient cause of the accident was only” the speed of the vehicle “it is surprising” that it had not occurred “the day before.” That day the same driver passed the bus through that point at a speed of 91 km/h. And she concludes that the report considers the alleged speeding to be a relevant fact despite admitting that the accident occurred in a “conflict point” because it had “poor visibility that could clearly be improved.”
The order assesses the testimonies of the two survivors, the driver Carlos Mazón, 64, and the passenger María del Rosario González, 50, as well as the reports presented by the parties to order the case to be filed. It calls on the defense of the families of the seven fatal victims to resort, in any case, to civil proceedings, once the compensation with the insurance companies has been settled.
“I don’t control it, I don’t control it!”
The only surviving passenger testified that the driver’s actions “were not reckless or reckless.” The woman was traveling in the seat behind the driver and was wearing a seat belt, but the rest of the passengers were not. She described the moments before the bus fell into the river: “I was talking to the driver and suddenly he shouted ‘I can’t control it, I can’t control it!’. I asked him ‘what’s wrong?’ and swerved a few times. The bus moved from one side to the other until it fell into the river,” the Judicial Police report states.
It was around 9:20 p.m. when a call from an individual informed 112 that he had just crossed the Pedre bridge and had seen a hole in the railing and guardrail about 20 meters long. Being a dark night and in full storm, the man could not see the river bed or hear anything due to the loud roar produced by its abundant flow.
Almost at the same time, the device received a communication from María del Rosario González who called from the driver’s cell phone warning of the tragedy. She asked for help because the bus was beginning to fill with water. She and the driver spent approximately an hour waiting for the emergency services to appear to rescue them. At that moment, the water was already reaching the roof of the bodywork, according to the testimony of one of the officers.
On December 29, when he left the Clinical Hospital of Santiago where he received medical attention, the bus driver went to the Traffic Subsector of the Civil Guard where he made an initial statement. According to the report, Monzón reported that he was going at a speed of 70 kilometers per hour (the limit is 80) and that he lost control of the vehicle when he found a bag of water and aquaplaning, so he noticed that the rear wheels locked. Furthermore, Monzón stressed that, at that time, three warning lights on the board came on and then the bus fell into the river without him being able to avoid it.
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