The crash of a bus into a 100-meter cliff in the region of La Libertad, near the Peruvian Andes, left at least 20 people dead and 33 injured, local authorities announced on Thursday afternoon (10).
The accident occurred on Wednesday (9), on a rural road between the cities of Tayabamba and Trujillo, according to information from the regional government. The delay in being notified was due to the fact that the location is one of the most remote in the Andean part — the bus trip takes about 14 hours.
The poor condition of the road, which forced the driver to make a sudden maneuver, would have been the cause of the accident, according to an investigation by the broadcaster Canal N. The episode heated up the debate in the country about the precariousness of the roads and the low supervision of companies transport, factors that have led to consecutive accidents.
Omar Iparraguirre, the ruler of Patáz, province of La Libertad where Tayabamba is located, asked the government of President Pedro Castillo to take measures against the operation of transport companies that do not meet the required operational requirements. “This problem is not new, it always happens,” he told reporters.
The Peruvian Public Ministry, according to the Associated Press agency, reported in December, in a compilation of official data, that in the last five years alone there have been more than 420,000 traffic accidents in the country, causing the death of more than 14,000 people and leaving another 272 thousand wounds, some with permanent sequelae.
The agency said, at the time, that the problem of road safety is already widespread and has been public knowledge for more than 20 years. The most recent official figures available indicate that, between January and October of last year, at least 2,053 people died in traffic accidents in Peru.
In June, 27 miners died and another 16 were injured when a bus fell into a 400-meter abyss on an Andean road in the south of the country, close to the famous Nazca Lines. Days before, another accident on a road, this one in the region of La Libertad – the same as this Wednesday’s accident – led to the death of 17 people.
