Edition 265
www.thecourier.es
Friday 1st April 2016
FAMILY CHEAT DEATH Fence Stops Bigger Tragedy
ALEX TRELINSKI
A
72-year old man died when two cars collided on the CV 859 road between San Fulgencio and Guardamar on Monday lunchtime. The accident happened at around 1.30 pm with the head-on collision said to have been caused by his vehicle losing control and going onto the other carriageway, hitting a Ford Focus carrying three people in the opposite direction. A fence prevented the Focus from going into a ditch, almost certainly preventing even more serious injuries or even fatalities amongst the family of three. Overall, there were 41 deaths over the Easter holiday period across the country according to Spain’s DGT traffic authority. In Monday’s San Fulgencio incident (picture from the Informacion newspaper), medics say that the 72-year old died instantly of head injuries, after his Jaguar car was heading towards San Fulgencio when the accident happened at kilometre point 7.8. The incident witnessed by a driver behind him who said that the Jaguar flipped twice in the air before going some 50 metres into the opposite lane, hitting the Ford Focus travelling in the direction of Guardamar. The three people in the other car (a couple aged in
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their sixties and an 11-year old child) , were taken to Torrevieja Hospital with relatively minor injuries. The 64year old driver of the Ford Focus had to be released by firefighters after he was trapped in his seat, but was not seriously hurt. His 61year-old wife, who was in the back only suffered minor abrasions, whilst an 11-year boy who was in the front passenger seat got his arm broken. No details of the family’s nationality was released. The road was closed for two hours with the dead man, according to the Informacion
newspaper, said to be a well known figure in the San Fulgencio area, who split his time living there and in Madrid, and was said to be a successful body builder who competed at an international level. So far 16 more people have died in Easter road accidents compared to 2015 as Spaniards made an estimated total of 8.7 million road trips over the 10-day Easter period. The holiday sees the most intensive road traffic of the year in Spain given the limited timescale for people to make journeys,
compared with the summer holiday period which lasts from the start of July until the end of August. The figures do though include the tragedy on Sunday March 20th when 13 foreign students died in a coach crash close to the city of Tarragona as they made their way back from the "Fallas" fiesta in Valencia. Investigations into the cause of the crash all point to driver error, while it has also been reported that none of those who died in the coach were wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident.