On Saturday morning, a bus with 35 passengers stopped at the railway crossing near the village Polomka, while the driver noticed too late that a train was coming and wasn’t able to move the bus out of the way quickly enough. According to local media, the train driver put on the brakes, but could only slow down from 55 mph to 70km/h, crashing in the middle part of the bus.
Apart from 12 deaths, six more people suffered heavy injuries. The passengers were a party of entrepreneurs and their families from the vicinity of Banovce nad Bebravou, traveling to the ski resort Bucnik near Polomka. The tragedy happened around 300 meters before their destination.
The main cause was determined to be the level crossing, which had no light signals, nor the bars to stop vehicles from crossing the railway. A dispute regarding responsibility has broken out between the Polomka mayor, Slovak railways, and the Ministry of Transportation. The incident is still under investigation, while the driver was not yet interrogated due to severe distress caused by the fact that all the passengers were his personal friends.
