A runaway tram with “failed brakes” lost control as it picked up speed, and threw several commuters onto a busy highway in Russia.
It eventually crashed into another tram leaving a total of 80 injured - including at least one dead - in the city Kemerovo, with several others fighting for their lives. Terrifying footage captured the moment the tram takes a corner at high speed with the doors coming off.
Two passengers are then hurled out some 50ft onto a busy road where alert drivers screeched to a halt in wet conditions. They were seen lying motionless on the road. At least three more passengers remain in hospital in a “serious” condition. The toll of wounded rose rapidly in the hours after the horror incident, with one person confirmed dead so far.
The doors were ripped off the speeding tram (IC Russia/e2w)Shot media said that the tram had already crashed into a car before it hurtled away at up top 60mph with the woman driver Alexandra Marieva, 23, evidently unable to apply brakes. She had been working as a driver since October last year, say reports. She suffered multiple fractures and a head wound and is now in hospital.
After the two commuters were thrown out the runaway tram crashed into an earlier service ahead of it on the line. There are wounded people from both trams, it is understood. A local report in Kemerovo, an industrial city in Siberia, said: “The accident occurred early in the morning on Logovaya Highway.
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“According to preliminary data, the tram traveling on route No. 10 experienced a brake system failure, as a result of which the car picked up enormous speed. As a result, at a turn, the doors of the tram were torn off and two people flew out.”
The people were hurled onto a busy motorway in Kemerovo, Russia (social media/e2w)
Members of the public appeared to be helping those inside the tram (social media/e2w)A criminal case has been opened into the 7:35am nightmare crash on tram route 10. There have been other examples of controls failing on trams, including in St Petersburg where the tram system is being prepared to go driverless under AI control.
“As a result of the collision, there are victims who are receiving the necessary medical care,” said a Kemerovo official. Transport in the area was “paralysed” after the horrific incident. A comment to a local story read: “Why is the Russian government spending a fortune on the war in Ukraine when our public services are so unsafe?”
The AKSM-60102 tram was made in neighbouring Belarus and was 16 years old. It had undergone a full maintenance on June 2, said reports.
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