Seventeen people were injured yesterday when a Yangon city bus rammed into a newly constructed toll gate in Taikkyi, the city’s northernmost township, and then burst into flames.
The accident happened at about 12:30pm, when the brakes on Yangon Bus Service 90 failed, police told Daily Eleven Myanmar.
After the collision, which itself injured two passengers, the mini-bus then caught fire, injuring 15 others in the blaze.
By the time fire and police department officers arrived on the scene, the vehicle was engulfed in flames.
“When they called us, we went immediately to help. The vehicle on fire was a YBS mini-bus. The entire vehicle was on fire. There were 17 in total that were injured. Those that were more seriously injured were sent to Yangon General Hospital in ambulances. Because it was a bus, we had to be more careful when putting it out. It took about 45 minutes to put out the fire,” the Taikkyi Fire Department told Daily Eleven Myanmar.
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, the bus-driver in the collision fled the scene after the accident, an northern district police officer told the local news outlet.
The YBS 90 has a checkered past. It was renumbered from YBS 55 to 90 shortly after a deadly crash between it and another city bus, the 37, killed 10 and injured 37 on July 2017.
Earlier that year, six people were injured after in a collision when a YBS bus rammed into another that was dropping off passengers at a bus stop.
The YBS bus system has been under constant scrutiny since its inception in 2017, when it replaced Ma Hta Tha, the previous government bus service, which was notorious for its consistent violation of traffic rules and general lack of safety regulations.
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