COSTA RICA NEWS – The Q doesn’t normally report or publish car accidents, just too many. But accidents like the one Wednesday night that took the lives of five young people remind us all of the the dangerous roads and drivers in Costa Rica.
Short on skills of the driver, speeding and lack of a median strip or divider, are some of the reasons that led to the collission between a small vehicle and a truck Wedendsay night, on the autopista Florencio del Castillo in San Dieo in La Union de Cartago, leaving the five dead at the scene.
At accident occurred around 9:00PM.
The deceased were five friends of the Tirrá 1 and Tirrá 2, in Dulce Nombre de La Unión, Cartago. The Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) identified them as: Mauricio Alonso Calderón Villalobos (20); Josept Alonso Chaves Allen (22); Steven Brizuela Alcázar (17); Diego Armando Calderón Sanabria (21) and Gabriel Fuentes Ospina (16).
Family and friends say that the group of five had left Dulce Nombre headed for San José by way of the autopista.
Four kilometres in their trip, the passenger vehicle left the road, crossed the median (since there is divider) and slammed head on to the oncoming truck.
Diego Herrera, head of the Policía del Tránsito in San José, said that there was “possible speeding on the part of the passenger vehicle, a Honda, causing the driver to lose control (…).”
Herrera added that four were wearing seatbelts, the fifth not, and was thrown from the vehicle.
Hector Chaves, directro fo the Cuerpo de Bomberos (fire department) explained that the Honda hit the left front side of the truck, was dragged some 40 metres (140 feet), and the sparks from the friction generate between the metal parts and the pavemenet, caused the leaking fuel from the passenger vehicle to ignited into flames.
The driver of the tractor trailer (whose identity was not provided to the press) suffered severe burns while attempting to extract the bodies from the mangled wreckage engulfed in flames.
Sources: La Nacion; Repretel; Policia de Transito; OIJ; Facebook
In the heading and in the article, you state that speeding was involved; however, later in the article, you quote the investigating officer as saying that there was “possible speeding.” This type of distortion of the facts is journalistically irresponsible. Transito already devotes too much energy to ticketing people for speeding and too little to reckless driving – they should be staking out problem intersections instead of posting teams on open highways with radar guns to generate easy money from drivers traveling at safe speeds that happen to be higher than the (ridiculously low) posted limits.
Thank you for reporting seat belt use. Although seat belt use did not affect the outcome in this case, seatbelts often save lives.
A better headline would have focused on the truck driver’s risking his life to try to extricate the kids from the burning car. He was the victim in this case, but he stepped up to try to save the kids in the car that crashed into him. Acts of heroism are uncommon these days deserve the attention of journalists.