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The 1978 Muñoz level crossing accident was a traffic accident that occurred on December 21, 1978 at a level crossing of the Salamanca – Fuentes de Oñoro railway line located next to the town of Muñoz, a district of the municipality of La Fuente de San Esteban, in the province of Salamanca, in Spain. In this accident, a school bus was run over by a locomotive, killing 32 people and injuring 65 others. It is, to date, the most serious accident to occur in Spain due to a vehicle being run over at a level crossing between railway and road.
Time and Location
The accident occurred at 09:10 local time (08:10 GMT) on December 21, 1978 at the level crossing without a guard located at kilometer point 53.205 of the Salamanca – Fuentes de Oñoro railway line.This level crossing, closed shortly after the accident, served the then only paved access road to the town of Muñoz, which linked it with the National Highway 620. The level crossing was located at the Salamanca side entrance of the railway to the small halt that served the town and was located about two hundred meters south of it.
Vehicles Involved
The bus that suffered the accident was a Setra Seida vehicle,model S-14, with registration SA-41408, manufactured in 1971, and had 55 seats for passengers. It belonged to a local contractor company of the Ministry of Education and Science for the provision of the school transport route to the grouped rural center of La Fuente de San Esteban that served the towns of La Sagrada, Carrascalejo de Huebra, San Muñoz, Ardonsillero, Muñoz, Tejadillo and Boadilla;
The locomotive that ran over the bus was a diesel engine belonging to Renfe's 321 series, model ALCO DL-500S, with registration number 321.048 (pre-UIC numbering 2148), manufactured by the Spanish Society of Shipbuilding in 1966. It was running isolated, returning to Salamanca after having given traction to the southern express train from Medina del Campo to the border station of Vilar Formoso.
Accident
The bus began its route in the town of Carrascalejo de Huebra at about half past eight in the morning, where it picked up the first schoolchildren. It continued its journey through La Sagrada and San Muñoz to the access junction to the latter town from the national road 620, where it picked up travellers from Ardonsillero and Tejadillo, and from there it continued its journey along that road to the access junction to Muñoz, a town where the penultimate stop on the route was located; Five hundred meters from the intersection of the National Highway is the level crossing that a few minutes later would be the scene of the accident. The bus passed him without problems, and arrived in Muñoz at around 09:05. After picking up the approximately dozen children from the aforementioned town, the bus resumed its journey to the Fountain of San Esteban. When reaching the level crossing again, the bus made the mandatory stop at the stop sign that protected it, after which it resumed its journey. At the moment when he was making the crossing, he was rammed by the locomotive in its central part, breaking in two; The entire area between the axles of the bus disintegrated due to the impact. Only the rear of the car was recognizable, which was next to the level crossing; the front one, which was dragged by the locomotive until it came to a stop about eighty metres from the point of collision, and the roof of the vehicle, which was caught in the front of the locomotive, being dragged by it to the point where it managed to stop, about one hundred and seventy metres from the point of the track where the collision occurred.
At the time of the accident, 97 people were travelling in the vehicle, of which 95 were schoolchildren aged between six and fourteen. The only adults travelling on the bus were the driver, who was 24 years old at the time of the accident, and a 57-year-old man from the village of La Sagrada who had asked the driver for permission to get on the bus in order to go to La Fuente de San Esteban to pick up a vehicle he owned that he had taken to a workshop in the aforementioned town for repairs.According to some media outlets reporting on the accident, once the bus began the maneuver to pass the level crossing, several passengers were able to see how the locomotive was approaching and warned the driver of its presence.
As a result of the accident, twenty-four minors and one of the two adults (the man who climbed the Sagrada) died on the spot. Two more minors would die during their transfer to the hospitals in Salamanca to which they were taken. The accident also left one injured as critical, nine classified as very serious (two would die during the afternoon of the same day of the accident and another two a few days later), thirty seriously injured (the bus driver and twenty-nine schoolchildren, -one of the latter also ended up dying-), one less serious, two classified as a reserved prognosis, and twenty-seven mild cases (of the latter four only had slight bruises and did not require hospital admission).
Of the thirty-two final fatalities of the accident, sixteen came from the town of La Sagrada, ten from San Muñoz, one from Tejadillo, two from Ardonsillero and two from Carrascalejo de Huebra, while among the children who boarded the bus in Muñoz only one deceased was counted.
Causes and circumstances surronding the accident
The level crossing where the accident occurred lacked guard personnel and was not equipped with any type of automatic enclosure system for the passage of convoys or warning of their approach. It was signposted on both sides with the corresponding danger signs that announced its presence, as well as approach beacons and next to it there were stop signs that forced vehicles to stop before crossing it. In accordance with the regulations on level crossings in force on the date of the accident, its degree of protection was correct taking into account the low intensity of traffic it endured, since according to it it had a traffic intensity score (AT) of 1155, it being not mandatory according to the same regulations that the crossing was saved if the AT was less than 1500 even if visibility was low The level crossing was located on a long straight section of the track, which in principle conditioned a relatively good visibility of the same on both sides. On the side of the passage through which the bus arrived, there were, however, two small buildings located next to the track - the shelter of the Muñoz stop and a small warehouse of material from the Renfe track and works service. Both were on the side of the road on which the bus approached it, the first of them about forty meters from the road and the second about twenty. Its minimum distance to the nearest rail of the railway was about five meters.It was therefore initially pointed out as a possible cause of the accident that these constructions could have prevented the bus driver from warning the arrival of the locomotive, especially the second one. Although the truth is that these buildings did reduce some visibility to the passage, taking into account their position a priori it was possible to stop in front of it without invading the railway track at a point where the aforementioned did not condition the correct view of it for several meters on the side from which the locomotive arrived. The speed at which trains ran through the area was high. In the direction in which the locomotive involved in the accident was travelling, the maximum speed limit was one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour to the Muñoz stop, beyond which there was a generic speed limit of eighty kilometres per hour.This gave any vehicle crossing the pass little time to correct a possible wrong manoeuvre (about eight to twelve seconds if one considers a visibility of 200-250 metres for a train travelling at between ninety and one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour).On the other hand, at the time of the accident there were no meteorological conditions that negatively influenced visibility; Although in the region where it occurred fog is frequent during the winter, the day of the accident dawned completely clear (on days when there was fog, for safety, the bus did not cross the level crossing, picking up passengers at the access junction to the town from the national road). The sun had already risen more than an hour ago and it, although still low, was falling from a direction quite far from the one from which the locomotive approached, which seems to rule out the possibility of glare.The bus was authorized to transport 84 schoolchildren, at a rate of three children for each pair of seats it had. At the time of the accident, the fare exceeded that figure. However, this circumstance does not seem to have influenced the incident. In reality, the fare that usually arrived at the Fuente de San Esteban was even greater, since several children from the villages through which the vehicle had passed had no longer attended class and in addition the children from Boadilla, a town that totaled fifteen more students, had yet to get on.
On both sides of the level crossing the road was configured in a slight downward ramp towards the outside of the railway, which in principle could make it difficult for vehicles to resume their journey after making the mandatory stop at the crossing before crossing it, but would also favour a possible backing up (and moving the vehicle away from the track) in the event of engine stopping on the crossing. The low temperature at the time of the accident (about three degrees below zero) could also have conditioned the presence of ice on the road, which could have caused the driving wheels of the bus to slip when it resumed driving after stopping in front of the passage. Although some media pointed to such a possibility, as well as that the bus's engine would have stopped during the maneuver to pass the level crossing, it is not clear that both things actually happened.
Considering the various factors, everything seems to indicate that the accident was due to a distraction on the part of the bus driver. The criminal case for the accident was held in the Provincial Court of Salamanca between April and July 1981; According to information published in various media outlets at the time, the bus driver was convicted of the crime of reckless endangerment at the trial.
That fateful day was the last that a bus crossed the level crossing. Thus, the commotion experienced in the area forced the Provisional Government to decree in the days following the accident, by emergency means, the replacement of the level crossing with an overpass, which was opened a few months after the event. During all those months, as a safety measure, the buses picked up Muñoz's schoolchildren at the junction of the N-620, without crossing the train tracks, as was done until the day of the accident when there was fog.
All photos dated to November 2016