【夜行バス転落死】Death on the highway: Girls falls to death on overnight highway bus

You can see where the window can be opened
Here’s the long and short of it:

[Tomeido Accident] Witnesses recall, “She just fell suddenly,” Wind pressure cited as possible cause
The victim
12-year-old Kokubo Misato of Mihama, Aichi, who died in the early morning of March 26 after falling from the window of a large charter bus at the Yakitsu Interchange on the Tomeido Expressway South Yakitsu, Shizuoka. A witness who dialed 110 (Japan’s 911) at around 1:50 am, a Tokyo truck driver (36), told Mainichi Shimbun reporters, “A person suddenly fell from the window of the charter bus as it was moving and rolled on the highway. The car directly behind the bus hit its emergency brake,” describing the scene at the time of the accident. Prefectural highway patrol are investigating the possibility that Kokubo opened the window herself and was then carried away by the wind, and are hurrying with reproduction trials to find the cause of the fall.

The bus’s windows are 1m above the floor, and about 50cm above the seat. They are in total 2m wide, but 1m of the window could be opened slide-style. The bus company maintains that “you cannot fall out of the window while seated.”

A student noticed that Kokubo was missing after a gust of wind from the fully open window woke her up.

The girl’s Japanese abacus teacher, who had led the trip to Tokyo Disneyland, said, “When we stopped at the service area (before the accident), there were children who opened the windows because it was so hot and humid.”

As someone from 2ch mentioned, the cops need to investigate the BUS COMPANY, not a possible hit and run!

What you might not get from these reports is that these buses are SHITTY. These people were returning to the Nagoya area, which is about a 5-hour drive by bus. I’ve ridden them several times (from Tokyo to Kyoto, an 8-hour trip) because they are so much cheaper than the obscenely expensive Shinkansen. The seats are small, the stops few (in one case non-existent) and the drivers unresponsive to demands. I once asked that the heat be turned down because I had a fever and it was completely uncomfortable, to no avail.

The bus company seems to be trying to blame this on the girl. That’s bullshit. Everyone SLEEPS on these overnight buses. No one is playing around the window, believe me. It shouldn’t have taken a girl’s death to show them that they need better bus design and a consistent heating policy.

The Japan Times doesn’t mention the students’ discomfort at all (possibly because these eyewitness reports only came after they went to print):

The bus, operated by Meitetsu Tohbu Kanko Bus, based in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, was the same one the students had ridden to the theme park in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, the previous day, they said.

Kokubo was killed when another vehicle hit her after she fell out, the police said, adding they are investigating the accident as a hit-and-run case.

According to investigators, the girl was sitting next to a window on the left side of the bus in the fourth row from the back. The bus was traveling in the middle lane of the three-lane, outbound side of the expressway.

A student sitting near Kokubo was awakened at about 2 a.m. by the fluttering of the window curtain and noticed that Kokubo had disappeared, the police said. The window in question was 56 cm high and 199 cm wide, they added.

Most of the pupils were asleep when the incident happened and no one on the bus saw or heard anything, they said.

The bus driver initially thought the girl had been left behind at a service area some 90 km away where the bus stopped shortly before her disappearance was discovered, and had made a U-turn at the next interchange to return for her.

The highway troopers said they believe the girl accidentally fell from the window after opening it herself, possibly because she felt sick.

Windows on the bus can be opened manually and used as an emergency exit even while the vehicle is moving.

Now, I will concede that a general tendency in Japan not to complain about service directly may have aided in this accident. But that’s because they think that the drivers should already know that there’s a problem and it’s their responsibility to fix it.

3 thoughts on “【夜行バス転落死】Death on the highway: Girls falls to death on overnight highway bus”

  1. <東名道事故>乗り物酔いで女児転落か のどに食物

     静岡県焼津市の東名高速下り線で26日未明、愛知県美浜町の小学6年生の女児が走行中の観光バスから転落した事故で、女児ののどに消化不良の食物が残っていたことが28日分かった。県警高速隊は、小久保さんが乗り物酔いで気分が悪くなり、車外に吐こうと窓から身を乗り出してた際に誤って転落したと見て調べている。
    (毎日新聞) – 3月28日22時11分更新

  2. Thanks for the update, Shoko! Translation: In the investigation of (the above-mentioned incident), it was found Mar 28 that the girl had poorly digested food in her throat at the time of death. The highway patrol is investigating the possibility that the girl stuck her head out the window to vomit after feeling carsick and mistakenly fell out.
    –Mainichi

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