A bus carrying children from the soccer club from Sokobanja caught fire while going uphill. The children were evacuated in time. The question is, however, what kind of karsts are used to transport travelers around Serbia
It's been almost two weeks since the news that didn't become news at all. It was Sunday, April 7, when a bus carrying boys from the Sokobanja football club caught fire in Rtnje.
The bus caught fire on the road between Boljevac and Sokobanja, after the engine overheated while driving uphill, "Vreme" learns.
This was reported only by the local portal Soko Press, which was confirmed by the Zaječar police and told that an investigation had been launched.
How it all happened
Several recordings were published on social networks. On one, firefighters extinguish the skeleton of a bus. In another, boys evacuated from the bus watch the fire and joke that "now they have heating."
It's just luck that everyone managed to leave the burning bus in time.
Boljevac-Sokobanja near the village of Ilino. Sunday afternoon. @n1srbija @DirektnoRS @novarsonline pic.twitter.com/sUh1vKeNDA— Predrag Bata Stevanović (@nacentru) April 8, 2024
As one person familiar with the case told Vreme, at first nothing was funny. He says that the driver near Boljevac noticed that the engine temperature was rising, but he did not want to stop.
"At the beginning of the climb up Rtanj near the village of Ilino, the car driving behind the bus overtook it and people from the car signaled to the driver that the rear part was on fire," says this source.
The coach of the boys from the young team "Sokograd" insisted that the bus stop and took the children and others out. Allegedly, there were 27 children on the bus.
"Immediately after that, the bus completely burned down, and fortunately no one was injured," says our interlocutor. Allegedly, sports equipment and other luggage were burnt.
The rocks drive us
As several interlocutors from Sokobanja told "Vreme", it was a local small transporter, which normally always drove the football club. The bus is supposedly of older production.
According to some statistics, buses in Serbia are on average older than twenty years, which is quite consistent with the fact that Serbia, including cars, has the oldest vehicle fleet in Europe.
"The city of Belgrade has newer buses, while there are many older ones in the interior. But that is irrelevant, it is important that they are maintained, that the service is carried out. Those who transport children would have to be controlled for six months," Goran Aleksić, head of the road passenger traffic association Srbijatransport, told Vreme.
He was not familiar with the case in Rtnja, but in principle he says that more often the problem is caused by small carriers who have a couple of buses and do not drive regularly.
"They drive, for example, football clubs and folklore societies." And they can only hire the cheapest carriers, and then it's also the least safe," adds Aleksić.
He says that it is a gray area and that many carriers - the cheapest ones - neither pay duties nor maintain their vehicles. "That's why situations like this can happen."
Things need to be arranged
Serbia, in addition to having an ancient vehicle fleet, also has a great shortage of chauffeurs. At a guess by the numbers, it goes up to fifteen or twenty thousand professional truck and bus drivers who are missing.
When it comes to public transportation of passengers, Aleksić advocates a change of perspective - the bus should not be there to make money for the owner, but to be at the service of the passengers.
He says that work on the new law on public transport began with the outgoing government and expects it to continue.
Currently, Aleksić states, Serbian carriers have huge costs and are among the few in the region that pay excise duty on fuel. It is precisely this that opens up a gray area for illegal or semi-legal carriers.
One of the things that our interlocutor advocates concerns stricter penalties. "Carriers must have a person responsible for traffic, and I think that person must bear greater responsibility, including sanctions, for the quality of the fleet, correctness and prevention."
Our interlocutors from Sokobanja are happy that no children were hurt. And they are surprised, they say, that this topic did not interest the media for two whole weeks.
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