M40 minibus crash

On the 18th of November 1993, just after midnight, a minibus was involved in a fatal collision with a maintenance vehicle on the M40 motorway near Warwick, England. The minibus was transporting 14 children home to Worcestershire from a school trip to the Royal Albert Hall in London when it veered into the rear of the motorway maintenance lorry which was stationary on the hard shoulder. Twelve of the 14 children and their teacher who was driving died in the crash, which is one of the worst on the British road network. The two survivors sustained minor injuries, as did the people in the motorway maintenance lorry.

Circumstances

The driver of the minibus, 35-year-old teacher Eleanor Fry, had driven the 14 children to London during the afternoon of the previous day (Wednesday 17 November), then watched a concert of young musicians with them at the Royal Albert Hall, and was driving back afterward. Fry had driven the 1982 Ford Transit, which had passed its MOT test two weeks earlier, several times before, both in the United Kingdom and abroad, and was described as a competent and experienced driver by the education officer for Hereford and Worcester.

Shortly after midnight, the vehicle struck a 12.5-ton Bedford motorway maintenance truck parked on the hard shoulder of an unlit stretch of the M40 near junction 15. The truck's safety lights were flashing. The minibus, which was estimated to be travelling at 73 to 84 mph at the time of the collision, exploded shortly after the crash and the bodies of several victims remained trapped in the wreckage. Some of the injured and dead were pulled from the wreckage by passing motorists who stopped to assist. A pathologist later found evidence that the driver was either taking off or putting on her spectacles at the time of the crash.

Fry and ten of the children died at the scene. Two other children died later in hospital from their injuries and two who survived the crash recovered from relatively minor injuries. The two occupants of the lorry also suffered minor injuries. Three men who were in the maintenance lorry were unhurt and pulled seven of the minibus occupants clear of the wreckage. All of the children involved were aged between 12 and 13 and were pupils at Hagley RC High School in Hagley, near Birmingham.

A second minibus carrying another group of pupils from Hagley RC High School who had also attended the London concert passed the crash scene and made it home safely to Worcestershire. Its driver Bernard Tedd, another teacher at the school, later told how he had a "feeling of dread" that the crashed vehicle on the hard shoulder was the other minibus, but had decided to continue driving as the emergency services were already there and he did not want to worry the pupils travelling in his minibus. A Warwickshire Fire Brigade public relations officer said Tedd had "saved those children from witnessing the worst accident any of us has ever seen."

Aftermath

The day after the crash, journalists gathered outside the school in Hagley, documenting the reaction of staff and pupils. The news media were managed by the authorities, with journalists corralled off from the school, in exchange for being provided with human interest information for their stories. Most national newspapers carried a photograph of two grieving schoolgirls, who were clearly identifiable from the picture; readers complained in writing that they considered this to be insensitive and an invasion of the girls' privacy.

Some newspapers were criticised for sensationalism and invasion of privacy, but the BBC
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