Police probing Egged officials over bus crash that killed 6

Senior officials at Egged, the country’s largest transportation company, are being called in for a police investigation, it was announced on Tuesday, two days after a collision between a bus and a truck on the country’s most important traffic artery left 6 people dead and 12 injured.

“We will not tolerate such negligence-related accidents,” a police source was quoted by Channel 2 as saying. “The more we learn [about this accident] the more we understand responsibility here stretches to the entire company,” the source said. The companies’ officials will “probably” be interrogated under warning, he added.

The investigation into the crash, in which a 402 bus slammed into a truck that was standing on the side of the road and its entire right side was torn off, will serve as a “root canal treatment” of security procedures at Egged, a company arguably carrying more Israeli commuters on a daily basis than any other mass transportation company.

“We are determined to investigate this to the full extent of the law,” police said. “We will investigate this like the accident on Road 31. As then, we didn’t suffice with the truck driver but called senior executives in the company, including security officers and managers. We intend to examine the way this incident unfolded minute by minute here as well.”

The accident on Road 31 in February 3, 2015, was a collision between a bus and a tractor in the south of Israel which resulted in the death of eight women and more than 20 injured. The bus carrying the women, a group of Bedouins returning from a trip to pray in Jerusalem, was owned by a private touring company, not Egged.

Haim Bitton, the driver of the bus in Sunday’s collision, was involved in an accident three years ago but was still allowed to continue driving. “We know this driver has a record,” police officials said. “We want to know whether senior officials at Egged did everything so that he received all the training and qualification necessary [before retaking the wheel].”

In the minutes after the accident, Bitton allegedly tampered with the tachograph, a device tracking the driver’s speed over the previous 24 hours. All Egged drivers begin a day’s work by inserting a tachograph disk with their personal details and exact date. The device serves a similar capacity to a black box in a plane.

Police sources said they wanted to know whether Egged personnel told Bitton how to try to disable the device in the minutes after the crash. They said he had made various phone calls immediately after the crash, rather than rushing to the aid of the injured, Israel Radio reported.

On Monday, police asked a transportation court to extend the remand of Bitton by three days. The request was granted and Bitton remains in police custody.