Belgian Coach crash in Switzerland - 28 killed.

[Portofino]

Here. My thoughts and prayers are with the poor, poor familes of those killed and injured. The villages aren't that far from where I live. Such a tradegy!

These classes de neige are part of the Belgian national curriculum - all Year 6 children go - the idea that something like this can happen.....

I hadn't heard any details about the drivers. Were they both married?

You make an excellent point Porto. i've heard nothing about the driver apart from it was possibly his actions that led to this.
DH said a couple of the children at his school knew two of the families affected and the bus drivers were cross because nobody had a good word to say about the driver of the coach.

None of the press for clarity. His guilt has been decided before any inquiry.

Agree portofino. The actual cause may well never be established , more a case of ruling out the more obvious, I suspect.

Do they know which driver was driving? It says in the belgian news that it isn't clear which one was driving. Both were experienced drivers.

I am bemused by the suggestion that the driver was fiddling about with a DVD. There cannot possibly be a reliable witness, as the surviving children would not have been in a position to see down into the drivers' area. They would have been too far back and too high up. I suspect that someone announced that a DVD was going to be shown, but there is no reason to assume that the driver was handling it - it's more likely that the resting driver, sitting in the crew seat, would deal with it.

I thought I heard that the Swiss authoriities said that the CCTV footage did not support the DVD idea?

Judging by the quality of most CCTV footage that we see, I doubt it would capture that sort of detail.

I'd be interested to see the interior layout of that coach model, to see details like where the steps to the passenger deck are, the position of the front passenger seats relative to the driver's seat etc. Could somebody have accidentally dropped something on to the driver, for instance.

Hopefully the mass coverage of this incident has led people to think about how dangerous the roads are, to realise that road accidents are the biggest killer in the developed world, and that people should not taker driving for granted by not indicating, speeding, using mobile phones and other distractions while at the wheel etc.

The media hardly ever reports on road deaths, because they have become complacent as they happen so often, they took notice of this because it was 22 children all at once, yet many more die every year on the roads unheard of, where I live there has been two hit and runs on toddlers so far this year unreported in the mass media.

Hopefully this wakes people up (for a while at least) to the deaths that are all around us, the danger that roads and careless driving brings.

I think they ruled out the dvd thing - through cctv and the fact the children at the back would not have been able to see anything.....

The investigation will be thorough. I am sure if there is a truth to be had, we will know it.

In the meantime, I laid flowers on behallf of MNetters at the school in Heverlee today.

Porto- have just seen the pics on fb. So sad.

Yes funerals in Lommel on Wednesday, and in Leuven/Heverlee on Thursday.

Thank you for that lovely gesture Porto

[Can't get the terrible image of the coffins lined up in the air force hangar out of my mind]

What those poor parents, families and schools are going through, I cannot imagine.