Pantura susceptible to fatal smashups

TEGAL, Central Java: Motorists need to drive more carefully when traveling along Java's North Coast Highway (or Pantura as it known locally), which is the scene of frequent fatal accidents, which last year claimed more than 150 lives.

Last Thursday, 18 people were killed in a horror crash on the Central Java stretch of the highway when a Sinar Jaya passenger bus slammed into fuel drums and caught fire in the town of Slawi, Tegal regency.

It was the worst crash reported this year along the highway in Central Java.

Police in the provincial capital of Pekalongan said on Tuesday that at least 156 casualties had been reported in traffic accidents in 2002 along the highway.

A total of 577 people were injured, with 234 of them being seriously injured, while almost Rp 1 billion in property losses were recorded.

The 156 deaths, however, were less than the 280 in 2001, when traffic accidents also injured 346 people and caused losses of Rp 1.4 billion, according to police data. --JP