At least 14 dead in Indonesia bus crash after driver slams into highway billboard

Police says accident was caused by ‘human error’ because driver was likely drowsy

Medical workers load a victim’s body into a vehicle after a bus crash in Mojokerto on 16 May 2022 (AFP via Getty Images)

At least 14 people have died and 19 were left injured in Indonesia when a bus carrying tourists flipped after hitting a billboard on a highway.

The bus driver was likely drowsy when the accident occured in Indonesia’s main island of Java, said local police, who stated that both the weather and traffic were clear at the time of the accident on Monday morning.

The injured were taken to a local hospital in the town of Mojokerto and were receiving treatment.

Videos from the scene of the accident showed police and rescue teams, including medical personnel, helping remove people from the battered bus.

Reports said the tourist bus was carrying 31 Indonesian passengers at the time of the accident.

Tourists were returning from a trip to Central Java’s Dieng Plateau, a popular mountain resort, when it hit the billboard on the Mojokerto toll road just after dawn, East Java traffic police chief Latief Usman was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

Authorities said the bus hit a pole and then rolled over the toll road connecting Mojokerto to Surabaya, the capital of East Java province.

The bus crashed just 400m before the highway exit.

A local administrative official, Ridwan Mubarun, told Indonesian television station Metro TV that the victims were from Benowo, a village near Surabaya, and were returning home after a long weekend at Dieng Plateau.

Mojokerto police chief Rofiq Ripto Himawan told reporters that police was investigating the cause of the accident.

“This accident was caused by human error, the driver was exhausted or tired,” Metro TV quoted a spokesman for the East Java police as saying.

Road traffic accident deaths in Indonesia reached 41,862 or 2.46 per cent of total deaths in the country, according to World Health Organisation data published in 2018.