Indonesia’s deplorable road safety is in the spotlight after a fatal bus crash exposed negligence

“I don’t know anyone on the bus, but I was still shaken,” she said, adding that it made her worry about her teenage daughter’s next school trip.

The students on the bus attended Lingga Kencana High School in Depok.

According to reports, the private company Trans Putera Fajar (TPF) bus lost control when it veered on a sloping slope and veered out of the lane and into the other vehicles. The bus was carrying 75 people, including students and staff, 10 of whom died instantly in the accident. A motorcyclist was among the fatalities.

The bus driver, Sadira, survived but was immediately taken into custody and classified as a suspect in the ongoing police investigation into the accident.

Sadira admitted that the vehicle had “engine difficulties” while driving and that he “tried to fix the problem himself,” police said.

Wibowo, West Java’s traffic control police director, said Sadira would be charged with “assault causing death or injury to others while using the road,” an offense that carries a maximum sentence of 12 years.

Eko Suyatno, a Surabaya-based bus driver, said he agreed that Sadira was guilty of negligence but felt his passenger had been “unjustly scapegoated.”

“Why should the driver take all the blame? Why didn’t the police arrest the boss of the bus company? It was his bad bus that largely caused the accident.”

The accident was the latest addition to a long list of tragic bus accidents in Indonesia involving students.

In January, a bus carrying students in Sidoarjo, East Java, overturned while attempting to avoid a collision, killing two passengers. In 2007, a bus carrying students from an Islamic school in Depok in Ciloto, West Java crashed, leaving 16 dead.

Indonesia’s Ministry of Transport told media that the transport license of the bus involved in the recent accident expired in December. TPF was not registered with the authorities and did not have a license to operate as a transport company.

The ministry also pointed to “defective brakes” as the cause of the accident and said police forensic investigations revealed that no brakes were applied during the accident.

“We advise bus companies to comply with existing regulations by having their vehicles tested every six months, as required by law,” Hendro Sugiatno, director general of land transport at the ministry, said in a press release.

According to the non-governmental Indonesian Transport Society (MTI), there were 116,000 recorded traffic accidents in Indonesia in 2023, an increase of 6.8 percent from the previous year.

MTI vice-chairman Djoko Setiwarno said his organization’s investigation into last weekend’s accident revealed that the TPF bus was already 18 years old and not “roadworthy” and had undergone “reconstruction” to give it a new look .

“Our law says that public buses that have been in use for more than 15 years must be decommissioned. Apparently the bus owner or his recent buyer circumvented the rules by having the bus converted while it was still running on an old engine,” Djoko told This Week in Asia.

He blamed “bureaucratic negligence” for the bus being in service for more than 15 years.

“Government agencies responsible for transportation must increase their vigilance and standards in compliance with existing regulations, which, if strictly implemented, should be sufficient to ensure public safety in transportation.”

Djoko also stressed the importance of commercial bus operators applying “high safety standards” in the management of their drivers and buses.

Kurnia Lesani Adnan, chairwoman of the National Organization of Transport Operators of Indonesia (Organda), confirmed Djoko’s claim that the TPF bus had undergone “cosmetic” surgery to make it look like a new bus.

“By comparing the data in the bus’s documents and its actual remains, we found that the engine was built in 2016. Someone falsified its details when re-registering the vehicle so that it could pass the test.”

Kurnia said the government must take decisive action to stamp out “illegal operators,” adding that his organization had repeatedly lobbied various authorities to this end without success.

“80 percent of accidents in commercial bus transport always involved illegally operated buses. They give the rest of us who try to follow the rules a bad name by association. In fact, they are not our members.”

The Ministry of Transport did not respond to a query from This Week In Asia on the matter.

Inanta Indra Pradana, an urban public transport advocate with the NGO Ruang Ramah Living, said the government’s role as a regulator in the transport industry had been found “defective” in light of the accident.

“The accident has so many anomalies that one wonders whether it could have been prevented if government authorities had done their job diligently.”

Citing the accident, Jakarta Education Department head Purwosusilo has banned schools under his jurisdiction from organizing field trips for students.

“It will save parents additional costs and prevent untoward incidents like the Ciater accident,” he said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Depok mother Sri Wahyuni ​​said she was shocked by the announcement.

“Instead of solving the real problems with transportation enforcement, they chose to punish students by locking them up on school grounds.”