Gardai to reconstruct bus crash events as inquiry gets under way

Gardaí are tomorrow morning to reconstruct events surrounding last Saturday's bus accident in Dublin city centre in an attempt…

Mr Eamon Traynor, left, and his sister Margaret (right), touch the coffin of their mother, Dublin bus accident victim Ms Margaret Traynor, at the funeral in the Church of Our Lady Immaculate, Darndale, yesterday.
Mr Eamon Traynor, left, and his sister Margaret (right), touch the coffin of their mother, Dublin bus accident victim Ms Margaret Traynor, at the funeral in the Church of Our Lady Immaculate, Darndale, yesterday.

Gardaí are tomorrow morning to reconstruct events surrounding last Saturday's bus accident in Dublin city centre in an attempt to shed further light on how it occurred.

The quays around the site of the accident, in which five people were killed and almost 20 injured, will be closed to traffic from 6 a.m. The reconstruction is likely to take less than an hour to complete.

Detectives say the reconstruction effort is primarily aimed at obtaining more information on technical aspects of the crash, such as the speed at which the bus was travelling.

Both buses involved in the accident are still impounded by gardaí. It is understood that none of the vehicles were found to be defective.

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As a mark of respect to the victims of last week's crash, all vehicles in the Dublin Bus fleet will today display black ribbons on the wing mirrors.

Meanwhile, the committee established by Dublin Bus to carry out an inquiry into the accident met for the first time yesterday. The inquiry is chaired by Mr Arnold O'Byrne, chairman of the Dublin Bus audit review group and previously managing director of Opel Ireland. It will report its preliminary findings in six weeks' time.

A Dublin Bus investigation team has also finished interviewing the two bus-drivers involved in the fatal crash.

Their statements and accounts will be part of the inquiry, the Dublin Bus spokeswoman said.

The inquiry will seek to establish the cause of the accident and make recommendations to prevent a similar tragedy.

The first phase of the inquiry, which is running parallel to a separate Garda investigation, will be conducted in private although its findings will be made public, a spokeswoman for Dublin Bus said.

The nine-person inquiry team includes three Dublin Bus officials, and transport experts from Britain, Germany and Belgium.

They include Dr Richard Lambourn, lead investigator with the UK Transport Research Laboratory; Mr Simon Brown, former group engineer with London Buses Ltd; Mr Wolfgang Arnold, engineering and infrastructure director with the Stuttgart Transport Authority in Germany; and Mr Hugo van Wesemael, former director general of Lijn Transport, Flanders in Belgium. A number of working groups will support the main committee, providing such information as technical studies and "peer review" reports.

The last of the remaining bus crash victims, Ms Kathleen Gelton, a 69 year-old mother-of-four, is due to be buried tomorrow.

Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of Ms Margaret Traynor (59) in Darndale yesterday.

Ms Teresa Keatly, a 43-year-old mother-of-three from Sillogue Avenue, was buried following a funeral Mass at Our Lady of Victories Church on Ballymun Road.

Three women injured in the crash were still being treated at St James's Hospital in Dublin last night.

Carl O'Brien

Carl O'Brien

Carl O'Brien is Education Editor of The Irish Times. He was previously chief reporter and social affairs correspondent