A BUS driver was killed and 18 passengers injured after two buses collided and caught fire in Bao’an District on Monday afternoon.

About 50 passengers were in the two buses when the collision happened on Minzhi Road.

Another small truck ran into the buses and also caught fire. The fire raged for nearly an hour before it was extinguished by firefighters.

The accident caused three trains on a rail bridge overhead to stop for three and a half hours. Trains have been ordered to cross the bridge at below 15 kmph out of safety concerns.

The deceased driver, Yu Yongqing, 35, from Xingning in eastern Guangdong Province, began to drive a Route 339 bus running between Bantian in Longgang District and the high-tech industrial park in Nanshan in October last year. He had no previous record of traffic violations.

The accident occurred when a dump truck, running to the right of Yu’s bus, suddenly sped up and crossed over to the other side of the road. Yu tried to avoid the truck, but ran head-on into a Route 380B bus on the other side of the road.

“I heard a bang and my head hit the chair in front of me and began bleeding,” said a young woman surnamed Xiao on Yu’s bus.

“We hit the windows hard but couldn’t broke any. Luckily, a young man broke the back door and we more than 30 passengers got off,” she said.

The conductor on the other bus opened an emergency door at the back of the bus, got off, and broke open the front door with the help of locals.

Zeng Xiangyi, the driver of the Route 380B bus, was rescued soon after, but suffered injuries.

Yu, however, was trapped in his seat and burnt alive.

It took half an hour for fire engines to arrive at the scene, witnesses said. It took another 25 minutes for firefighters to put out the fire.

(Li Dan)