Three tourists were killed due to injuries suffered on Wednesday, 8 October 2022 and three dozen more were injured when a bus swerved and landed on its side on the Bulevar del Este in Punta Cana. The deceased and injured were taken to the Hospiten, Hospital IMG and Centro Médico Punta Cana in central Punta Cana. There is no public hospital in Punta Cana. The deceased were identified as Argentinians Valeria Paola Medina and Valeria Victoria Brovelli and Carla Rodríguez from Peru.
Preliminary reports indicate bus driver 47-year old Franklin Nin Perez was speeding when taking a pronounced curve.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office assures in its accusatory file that the driver was driving under the influence of cocaine, “without caution, in a careless, reckless, reckless and imprudent manner.” The prosecutors cite a urine test carried out to the driver at the IMG hospital. The prosecutors consider that “he was speeding and that when turning right he did not reduce his speed.”
Reckless driving is cited as main cause of the bus accident on the main Punta Cana Bulevar Turístico del Este road. Once again, a surveillance video sets the record straight of what happened. The surveillance video shows how the bus transporting tourists from Punta Cana resorts to an excursion in Saona island was speeding and failed to slow down when entering a pronounced curve.
Preliminary findings reveal that all that could have gone wrong went wrong. Other reports indicate that the bus’s tires were very worn, and these apparently failed when they were most needed. The lack of proper maintenance of the bus is the responsibility of the bus company, Suero Service Bus.
Furthermore, a hospital urine test on the driver, Nin Perez, reveals he tested positive for traces of cocaine.
Journalist Huchi Lora in his weekly news review, Esta Misma Semana blasts the authorities and says it reflects “the chaos in the transport sector.” Lora addresses the issue of the monopoly that controls transport and decides who gets to transport people on popular routes. “In this government and the past one, no one has dared interfere with those who control transport,” he states. He blasts the control on bus routes is gained and kept with violence. “The monopolies are won in wars,” he says, urging the government to learn from this tragedy and take action.
He criticizes that the authorities distributed a preliminary report with the driver’s remarks saying that a truck had gotten in his way and he had to swerve, resulting in the accident. The surveillance video shows the driver had clear driving through. An ambulance did not arrive in time to save the lives of three. It was later known that there are only three 911 ambulances for all of Punta Cana.
Meanwhile, Lora shares a dire fact. The Dominican Republic is in first place with 64.9 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants per year. Lack of driver education, thousands of kilometers of roads where people can speed and do, and negligence of the authorities and everything fails.
The director of the National Institute of Transit and Land Transportation (Intrant), Hugo Beras, says the authorities were already advanced regarding major changes for the regulating of tourism transport in the East. Beras said that a recertification process has begun for all companies that provide tourist transportation services.
After regretting what happened in the traffic accident in Punta Cana, the executive director of the National Institute of Transit and Land Transport (Intrant) says plans have been drafted and the structure is already in place to start to organize and control the tourist transport corridors of this and other poles of the country. A Tourist Transportation Control Center is underway.
He said next week he has scheduled a meeting in Punta Cana, and then he will meet with authorities in Puerto Plata and Samana to review those provinces’ tourist transport sector.
“Precisely we had a meeting in recent days with the tourism sector authorities to see the whole project, what is the organization of the tourist transport, to control it and to supervise it,” said Beras.
He explained that the whole plan for the tourist transport of Punta Cana and Higüey is already structured, and that even the training of the team of technicians of the Intrant had been done last week to get started on the project.
Beras said that the same system that is being put into place to monitor and control cargo transport, that using technology to control and supervise the flow of trucks, will be used for tourist transport companies.
He said with the system in place, the monitoring center will detect tourist transport vehicles that travel at excessive speed, and the company’s operating permit may be cancelled.
Meanwhile, Diario Libre publishes on 10 October 2022 an editorial by executive editor Ines Aizpun that in a nutshell tells it all: “It’s the system!” The journalist calls for the government to stick to the laws and stop accommodating special interests. She highlights that now it was tourists, but frequent accidents are a daily threat to all commuting in the country.
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10 October 2022