“The road was very narrow, but for some reason our driver decided to overtake [the other bus]. People were cut to pieces,” Natalia Gavrilova, a Russian tourist who survived Tuesday’s horrible bus crash near Eilat, said from her hospital bed.

Three factors influence any driving situation: the road, the car and the driver. Newer roads and modern cars are built to be “forgiving” – engineered to account for driver error and to increase the chance that such errors won’t necessarily result in an accident.

But if we are to believe what the surviving passengers aboard the doomed tour bus told the media – that their driver was drag-racing the bus in front of them and generally being aggressive – driver “error” can be ruled out here, and more forgiving engineering probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Continue reading →