2 men killed crossing highway to help motorists after crash; 13 die in three days
Middle aged men struck by passing cars on Highway 4 near Yad Mordechai, marking latest road deaths during particularly bloody period on Israeli roads
Two people were killed while trying to cross a busy highway to help victims of a car crash early Friday morning.
The victims brought the number of people killed in road-related incidents over the past three days to 13.
The two were attempting to walk across Highway 4 near Yad Mordechai in southern Israel when they were both struck by passing cars, according to police. They were declared dead at the scene.
The pair had been attempting to provide help after a crash between two cars on the other side of the road, one of the main highways along the southern coast north of Gaza.
The victims were later identified as Yoav Hadari and Hanoch Telker, bus drivers from the southern city of Ofakim.
The drivers of the vehicles in the other crash, men aged 28 and 67, were taken to a nearby hospital with light-to-moderate injuries, MDA said.
Police did not release any information about the drivers of the cars that fatally struck the two other men.
The fatalities were the latest in a particularly deadly period on Israel’s roads. On Thursday night, a mother and her two young daughters were killed when a bus rolled away from its driver and smashed into a bus stop in Jerusalem. Days earlier, another bus in the same Jerusalem neighborhood lost control and crashed into a building, killing a man, 70.
Also on Thursday, a 54-year-old woman and her 7-year-old niece from Qalansawe were killed when a car and a truck collided at the Be’erotayim Junction along Route 57 near Netanya. And a 40-year-old man died after his truck was hit by another truck in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon.
On Wednesday, a man was killed when a Palestinian driving a stolen car against traffic collided with him on Route 5, near the central city of Rosh Ha’ayin. The Palestinian driver was also killed.
Less than an hour after the deadly West Bank collision, a 25-year-old motorcyclist was killed in a crash involving another motorcycle and a car on Route 65 near the northern Israeli town of Kafr Qara, southeast of Haifa.
Despite the rising death toll, the 213 traffic fatalities in Israel this year as of Thursday morning were still 4% lower than the year previous, according to official figures from the National Road Safety Authority.
A total of 364 people were killed in traffic incidents in Israel in 2021.
