Tourists in Accidents on Three Continents

With the summer tourism peak just starting up, you could be forgiven for getting a bit worried about whether or not you can get around safely once you’ve landed at your destination. In the last week or so there seem to have been endless news items about vehicle crashes involving tourists, which could almost make you want to stay home.

In Egypt, for example, at least nine tourists were killed when their overnight bus from Sharm el Sheik to Cairo rolled over and burst into flames. Apparently motor vehicle accidents are reasonably common in Egypt due to a combination of excessive speed, careless driving and the poor condition of the roads. In this incident, passengers who survived the crash have said they saw that the bus was traveling at speeds over 100 miles per hour. Mostly European and Canadian tourists were involved in the incident.

A couple of days earlier, a train crash in China also involved a number of tourists, mostly from France. It was also an overnight journey, this one from Beijing to Qingdao, a popular part of the tourist route, and one that’s bound to get busier soon since Qingdao is hosting the sailing events for the upcoming Olympic Games. An overnight express train came off the tracks and collided with another passenger train traveling in the opposite direction, causing both trains to roll down an embankment. The officials have already admitted that, like the case in Egypt, this accident was caused by human error. So far, the reports suggest that around 70 Chinese were killed and numerous tourists were injured.

It’s really a bad news week for tourists, because there was also a fatal bus crash in Spain, involving tourists who were on a bus bound for the airport in Malaga to catch their flights back home. This time, it looks as though the driver was over the legal limit for alcohol while he drove the bus. Nine tourists from Finland, including a young girl, were killed in the accident.

These kinds of accidents are definitely bad publicity for destinations, but the scary part is that they seem to happen right across the world. All traveling involves taking some kind of risk, but it sometimes pays to do some checking into the safety of the local public transport systems before you hop on board. Remember that the same kind of accident could also happen to you at home, of course, and despite the bad news, don’t stop planning your next trip.