“We have already informed the driver of the accusation of committing a crime under the influence of an addictive substance. If the court finds him guilty, he faces up to three years in prison,” police spokesman Jakub Mareš told Fairpress.
Really dramatic moments were experienced by RegioJet passengers on the line from Prague to Chomutov in mid-August. They felt in immediate danger for tens of kilometers, because the driver refused to stop, they characterized the drive as dangerous and at times even frantically fast.
“He was driving very fast and outrunning the police at a speed of 100 kilometers before they managed to stop him,” said a relative of one of the passengers on Instagram in the summer.
At the end of the trip, the driver was immediately fired from his job, and the carrier, RegioJet, stated that it was the first incident of this kind in the 25 years it has been operating bus services.
The owner of the company, Radim Jančura, also announced that he will fight more with alcohol addiction. “Since the beginning of the year, we have already had over a thousand inspections and we will install equipment that will ensure that the bus does not start,” he told Novinkám on August 20, adding that the equipment will make it impossible to drive if the driver arrives “under the influence.”
Before the end of October, the company was still looking for a suitable solution. “We are dealing with intervention in several types of buses. It works for Setra, but not yet for some older types. But such a system will only make sense if it cannot be bypassed,” Jančura pointed out a few weeks ago.
According to police statistics over the last decade, which were analyzed for Fairpress by the company DataFriends, over 60 percent of bus accidents were caused by driving style, over 18 percent by failure to give way, and high speed was the cause of collisions in almost eight percent of cases.
