A 21-year-old motorist was taken into police custody on Friday July 28 in the Yvelines, where an accident involving a car and an SNCF replacement bus left two dead and many injured. Among the latter, five are in “absolute urgency”, announced the prosecutor’s office of Versailles.
The two bus passengers who lost their lives are a man and a woman, born in 1959 and 1969 respectively. Thirty-three injured people are in “relative emergency”, said the prosecution. According to the prefecture, 93 firefighters, 7 medical teams, 20 rescue vehicles and 2 SAMU and civil security helicopters went to the site to “allow the evacuation of the wounded in absolute urgency”. All the injured were evacuated “to the hospitals of the department”. A medico-psychological emergency unit has also been set up.
The vehicle was carrying around 50 people.
At 1 p.m., several recovery trucks were present on the spot and towed the damaged bus, noted the journalists of Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The circumstances of the accident in Mézières-sur-Seine remain to be determined, said the prosecution and the prefecture of Yvelines. At first, a police source said that the bus had swerved when it saw a car driving in the opposite direction.
On departmental road 113, the vehicle was carrying around fifty people. It ensured the replacement of the section of the J line of the Transilien between Epône-Mézières and Mantes-la-Jolie, the axis being under construction, according to the Transilien site.
“Every year more than 3,000 road deaths”
Informed of the tragedy, the Minister Delegate for Transport, Clément Beaune, went to Mézières-sur-Seine. “It is too early to say, but there is indeed a risk that there was alcoholic behavior,” he said, on BFM-TV, when the investigation began.
“It is also an absolutely necessary reminder of vigilance for everyone, of strict respect for the rules”, to avoid tragedies, said the minister, deploring that “every year there are more than 3,000 deaths on the roads” of France. Last year, 3,260 people died on the roads of mainland France.
The president of the Ile-de-France regional council, Valérie Pécresse, deplored on Twitter, renamed X, a “terrible accident” and addressed her “thoughts to the victims, their families, the bus driver” confronted according to her with a “driver”.
The SNCF group claimed to have “learned with great emotion” of the occurrence of the accident and “associates[r] with the pain of the victims and their families”. The company has set up an information and help number for the families of the victims (0800 130 130), but did not give further details on the circumstances of the accident.
In March, a school bus carrying primary school students returning from summer camps and heading for Grenoble station had overturned in a ravine, after leaving the road near Corps, in Isère; 14 passengers were injured, including 2 adults in “absolute emergency”.
