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Photo: Facebook of Eleonora Hristozova
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A driver fell asleep several times while transporting passengers from Sunny Beach to Sofia. The dangerous behavior of the driver was signaled on social networks. Here is what Eleonora Hristozova wrote:
“KILLER on the road! Driver of Union Ivkoni and a nightmarish return from the sea.
Union Ivkoni bus course, which started at 17.00 from Sunny Beach and ended in Sofia at 00.30 after midnight. Duration – 7.30. But… this same driver took back at 5.30 in the morning. As he slept for about 4 hours, instead of the required 8. That’s exactly how he obviously went with us, because his vacation at the sea is from 13 to 17.
I personally checked him in the morning when I returned to the bus station at 5.30 to see that he was really going back to the sea after 4 o’clock, although the call center of the company assured me that this was not possible.
We ended up with a driver who would literally kill us! 50 people on the bus.
On the highway – the first accident – a woman screamed – “Driver, what are you doing ?!” He fell asleep at the wheel and turned to the guardrail. I was horrified not to fall into the ditch and become like that fatal case with the crashed flight on the highway “Trakia” with 6 victims and 20 injured, again on “Ivkoni”.
This, unfortunately, with the deviation to the guardrail and the sleeping driver was repeated shortly before Plovdiv. Deviation to the right again, guardrail on the edge. This time all the people were shouting, there was panic and everyone was screaming to stop at the first gas station. Although he reluctantly stopped. A passenger went to buy him coffee, I asked him to come down to cheer up, but he chose to take a nap at the wheel. When I saw what he looked like, I felt sick – he could barely look at her.
The passengers insisted on rest, some even offered to sleep for at least an hour, we were all afraid to continue another 160 km to Sofia. A young couple even stayed at the gas station and decided not to continue, the girl was crying.
From there, our return and survival was due to a man on the flight who sat next to the driver and talked to him all the time so he wouldn’t fall asleep again. He and another man were ready to replace him, to drive for him to pick us up alive.
We were all terrified because it was already raining from Plovdiv to Sofia and the road was even harder. The man who kept him awake wiped his windshield every 15 minutes so that he could see the right mirror and not go into the ditch. He was shocked that when everyone shouted at the driver to stop immediately to rest and fall asleep, he told him that he didn’t care about people because he was leaving the company.
The return from Plovdiv to Sofia was 2 and a half hours, 160 kilometers for us a complete horror.
As a passenger, I would like to ask the management of Union Ivkoni, should there be another serious accident with victims, in order to check the drivers, how adequate they are, how they drive and whether this is known in the chain, and by what criteria they are hired?
Is it normal for passengers to keep the driver awake and ready to change the steering wheel so that we can come home alive?!?
Is it normal for this driver to take the return course at 5.30, after he picked us up at 00.30 after midnight, at 4 o’clock sleep.
This driver is a potential KILLER on the road! Worse, he didn’t care!
The name of the driver of Union Ivkoni – Vasko Stoyanov, made the course Sunny Beach-Sofia on 25.08 at 17.00 and the opposite on 26.08 at 5.30. The number of the bus – SV 9460 MB. All these facts can be seen in the documents, because the name of the driver was given to me by phone from the company.
I only regret that in panic and stress, we did not remember to call the police at the station at night and in the morning to see his travel documents at 5 o’clock and how inadequate he is. Anyway, let’s stop him from going at all, so he doesn’t go wild on the road. “
Another eyewitness told BTV:
“He began to fall asleep and started moving towards the guardrail. A woman in the front seat screamed, “Hello, driver, what are you doing?” We made him, almost forcibly, call him an emergency break, bought him a refreshing drink, splashed, and from there I took matters into my own hands, sitting next to him. After the fork for Plovdiv, I started to touch him, pinch his arm and talk to him in any way on any topics that would be interesting to him, “a passenger from the bus told BTV. The driver said that he left Sunny Beach for Sofia at 5.45 in the morning to be in the capital at 1 p.m. While he parks, while he takes a shower and goes to bed, he has 2-3 hours left to sleep. And at 5 pm he has to take the return trip.
Union-Ivkoni told BTV that they were investigating the case. Their routine inspection found that before leaving Sunny Beach, the system reported that a second person was driving. However, the sleeping driver was fired.
“The data is contradictory and so we continue with the inspection, but I accept the signal and I want to know that each of the passengers can turn to our office to be compensated for the stress by getting their money back,” he told B. You are Georgi Atanasov, manager of Union Ivkoni.
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