Senior police officials expressed anger on Thursday after a traffic accident claimed the lives of four young students and two adults. Three others were badly injured. Police said they warned the Public Works Department of unsafe conditions in the area, but the department failed to rectify the situation.
The accident took place at the Kever Binyamin Junction, east of Kfar Saba. A minibus carrying 12 and 13-year-old students from the Arab Israeli town of Kafr Kassem was hit by a truck while attempting to execute a turn.
According to police, if a traffic light had been set up at the junction, the crash might have been prevented. “There's no doubt that the accident resulted from human error,” one officer told the Hebrew-language daily Maariv. “But still, this is a case of 'putting a stumbling block before the blind.' This junction should have had a traffic light.”
Sources in the Public Works Dept. said they had planned to put a traffic light at the junction, but that the budget to do so had been confirmed only recently. According to a different report, the department had attempted to fix problems in the intersection, but was prevented from doing so by Jewish and Muslim religious leaders following the discovery of graves at the site.
Police were not satisfied with the explanation, and demanded to know why the process had not been faster. Some officials indicated that the Public Works Dept. could find itself under investigation over the incident.
In the absence of a traffic light, police took the unusual step of closing the junction completely following the crash, leaving drivers unable to turn in either direction.