a 15-year-old boy was trapped in the trunk of a 947 Bus for 40 minutes while driving to Jerusalem

A bus on line 947 was again involved in an unusual event. On Saturday night, it turned out that a 15-year-old boy apparently entered the trunk to put his luggage in and was trapped inside. About forty minutes after entering, police stopped the bus at the Hamad interchange not far from Mevaseret Zion. It turns out that the boy who entered the trunk tapped the sides of the bus but the driver continued on his journey. Passengers on the bus testified that they heard the boy's tapping but thought it was a passenger who was late to the station and asked the driver to stop and allow him to board the bus.
Near the Hamad interchange, a police car ordered a 947 bus driver to stop. When the bus stopped, he was told to open the trunk and the boy left. A quick investigation revealed that the teenager called the police 100 call center and informed them that he had been trapped in the trunk. Police believed it was an attack and stopped the bus. Passengers were transferred to an alternate bus and traveled to Jerusalem. The boy was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Jerusalem for examination and the driver was detained for questioning.
Police are investigating the circumstances of the serious accident in which four people were killed - 79-year-old Joseph Kahalani of Petah Tikva and three other women. The arrest of the bus driver, Alexander Leibman, 44, has been extended from time to time in Rishon Lezion Magistrate's Court. Leibman, who crashed at the bus stop at the Checkpoint junction near Ben Gurion Airport, began studying bus driving three years ago at Egged's Driving School, and only two years ago was embroiled in work on the various lines. Former drivers on line 947 (nicknamed "punishment") The hard work and the heavy load.
Elisaf Shar-Shalom, who was slightly injured in the accident, who returned: "A quarter of an hour before the accident, I came to him and asked how long to come to Netanya, and he was not focused, as if he was going through something. My feeling was that he was traveling fine, but he was not all on the road."
"I've done this line a few times and it's not easy," said Nir, a former bus driver who worked for the company two years ago. "You cross a lot of points with him, and he is very crowded with people and times," explains the driver, who, like most drivers who know the line, explained that he would usually arrive at his finish station without time for a normal break - and immediately head back the other way. "You make the line back and forth and sometimes there is no time for a break. When you get to the refreshment station you get out of it, do pee on the wheel and leave again. .
R., who is still driving the company and used to drive the line himself, said he passed by last night while driving on another line. "The play was horrific, but it's a long and exhausting line, a harder line than the line between Tel Aviv and Eilat. There at least I have two stops, and besides, I'm not concerned with raising passengers but just driving. 947 It's such an exhausting line that the first time I made it The final stop on four of fatigue. It's the traffic jams on the road, the crowd load, the money collection from sometimes thirty people at the station, after all these trips do not rise behind, only through the driver. "
R. also referred to the location where the accident happened last night, claiming that although the road in the area is good, there are problems: "The area there is very dark, when I drove along this line the passengers on the station would light themselves on the cellphone so I would see that they are there and need to stop," he recalls.
In the Ministry of Transport, discussions were held in the not too distant past, with the idea of ​​splitting the line in half, due to the fact that the trip was lengthened over the years due to traffic jams, but it was finally decided to leave it as it was.
A ministry official said: "We often claim that drivers are missing, and that there are drivers at the wheel that we would not want to see at the wheel for all sorts of reasons. "That is the case, but that is the case."
Line 947 leaves from the Carmel Coast station in southern Haifa. He entered the coastal road to the stations at Atlit interchange and the Or Akiva interchange. He then entered Netanya, among other places, into the city's main station. After that, the line travels to Highway 4, and it also goes down the main road to the stations at the interchanges. The bus continues to the Ra'anana junction and enters the bus terminal, then passes onto Highway 40 - where it enters Hod Hasharon and Petah Tikva. From there, the bus continues south to the pilots' intersection and then to the Badak junction, where the fatal accident occurred last night.
Next, the bus passes near Ben Gurion Airport, and from there continues on Route 1 to Jerusalem. In total, line 947 has 30 stops, and according to Egged's travel site with him from Haifa to Jerusalem, it takes almost 3 hours. Egged also operates Haifa and Jerusalem on line 940, of which only two Stations - Atlit and Fureidis Junction The journey on the line, which passes through Route 6, takes only two hours.
Baggad said that the bus on which Leibman was driving has undergone a comprehensive safety check in recent days and that a brake check was carried out a few months ago. Also, according to Egged's GPS, the bus's speed in the seconds before the accident was about 60 mph.