As GNR police continue to investigate the head-on crash on the EN125 that killed three young people in the early hours of Monday morning, the only survivor has claimed the accident was caused by “crazy speed”.
“The car was coming around the corner so fast that the driver couldn’t control it,” the van driver told SIC TV news in an emotive report that concentrated on the damage done by tolls imposed on the only alternative trans-Algarve highway, the A22 Via do Infante.
With recovery work still ongoing on the pink Audi TT that lay unrecognisable by the side of the road, a friend of the young people killed, as well as an INEM doctor, alluded to the unnecessary deaths caused as a result of the tolls.
“The government has to know,” the unidentified friend told TV cameras. “If there were no tolls, there would be fewer drivers on this road of death and these tragedies could be avoided.”
INEM doctor Christian Charin confirmed that “unfortunately, there has been a significant increase in the number of road traffic accidents and the number of deaths” since the tolls came into force three years ago.
The three victims identified as Carina Ferraz, 19, Rafael Costa, 20, and Nikolae Bafta, 24 were all on their way home from a party in a Vilamoura disco when the car they were driving in came round a corner in Patã, ending up on the wrong side of the road.
“There was nothing I could do,” the van driver told SIC.
The Audi TT – a car that appears to have belonged to none of the victims – crashed violently into the van though the driver escaped uninjured.
A source from Faro’s GNR has confirmed the accident was caused by speeding.
“All you have to do is look at the pictures and see the state that the car was left in,” he told the Resident.
The victims were killed outright and their bodies had to be cut from the wreckage of the vehicle.
These latest deaths bring the total number of fatalities on Algarve roads this year to 30 – double the tally of last year, with five deaths having taken place in the last two weeks on the EN125.
Ironically, the anti-tolls group that has been urging the government to rethink its decision over tolls – already deemed illegal by the European Union – had only just delivered one of its annual petitions that attempt, every year, to change the desperate situation on the EN125.
For more information – Three dead with EN125 in “state of war”
