Negligent driver who injured 11 children in collision with schoolbus, handed fine, licence suspension

A driver whose negligence caused him to collide with a schoolbus, injuring several children, some of them grievously, has been fined €1,000 and had his driving licences suspended for three months.

29-year-old Andreas Buhagiar had failed to stop when exiting a side street onto a main road at Triq Gebel Ghazzara, St. Paul’s Bay in May 2017.

Magistrate Simone Grech handed the sentence to Buhagiar, after finding him guilty of causing injury to 11 persons who were hurt in the collision. Buhagiar was also convicted of reckless driving, failing to stop at a stop sign and driving a vehicle with an expired road licence.

Two 7-year-old girls had suffered grievous injuries and besides the 10 St. Monica students, the 63-year old schoolbus driver was also injured as a result of the incident. Buhagiar’s car’s impact with the rear quarter of the schoolbus had turned it on its axis, causing it to hit a wall. The schoolbus was subsequently declared a total loss.

The two seriously injured girls required hospital treatment. One of the mothers of the injured children told the court that her daughter’s right leg had been broken by the impact and that she had spent two weeks in a cast and walked with a limp for a month after that. Another girl suffered a gash on her forehead, spending three nights in hospital and ended up with a permanent scar.

Magistrate Grech ruled that the evidence led her to conclude that the incident had been caused by the accused’s negligence behind the wheel, noting that he had failed to stop at the intersection of the side street he had been driving on with a main road where the schoolbus had been transiting. 

The magistrate noted that any uncertainty regarding the bus driver’s testimony, in which he had said he was not certain that the accused was the driver of the car which collided with his vehicle, as he had been more concerned with the wellbeing of his passengers at the time, had been superseded by the evidence. It had been proven to the court’s satisfaction that the accused was the driver in question, pointing to police affidavits, the Current Incident Report, as well as an application filed by the same accused in October 2017 in which he had asked for the return from police custody of personal effects which had been collected from inside the car.

In deciding on the sentence, the court said it had taken judicial notice of a social inquiry report about the accused, which had recommended a fine together with a licence suspension for a duration above the minimum.