A container truck of more than 40 tons was hit by a HCM City-Hanoi train at 5am, September 12, just 15km from the Hanoi Railway Station.

The container was upturned and pushed for 15 meters. More than 200 passengers had to leave the train and sought a way into Hanoi on their own.

The accident occurred at the railway crossing Thuong Tin district, Hanoi. The train was on its way from HCM City to Hanoi and it was only 15km from the Hanoi Raiwayl Station. The truck was over 40 tonnage and from the coastal city of Hai Phong.

The truck capsized, but luckily, nobody was injured, though the truck cabin was damaged.

The train captain Dinh Ngoc Son explained that, though the locomotive and the train were not harmed seriously, the truck body and the locomotive were stuck together after the collision. Rescue workers had to cut the cabin from the truck to bring the train to a nearby railway station.

Son noted that a short time ago, the train struck a car driver urinating on the tracks and the train had to stop for nearly 20 minutes. Two train employees brought this driver to hospital for emergency aid.

“It was very lucky that the train was running at around 30k per hour, so the collision was not strong. If the train ran at its normal speed of 70-80km per hour, the consequences would have been very serious,” Son observed.

The container truck driver admitted that he crossed the railway illegally.

When the accident occurred, there were more than 200 passengers on the train. Most of them left the train to go to Hanoi by themselves. By 9:30am, the road was cleared.

Many serious train accidents have happened recently in Vietnam. On November 22, 2009, a Hanoi-HCM City hit a coach with 30 people, killing nine people. On January 12, 2010, a college student was hit by a train and pulled for 20m when she crossed the railway in Hoang Liet ward, Hanoi. On July 27, 2010, a taxi was hit by a train when it crossed the railway in Ngoc Hoi ward, Hanoi, and three of five taxi passengers died. A North-South train collided with a dump truck in Ha Nam province on August 6. The accident injured two train engineers and the truck driver.

All the accidents resulted from driving errors in crossing or blocking the tracks.

Photos of the accident:

Source: VNE/Dan Tri