Police arrest bus driver in fatal Fukushima highway crash, search operator

FUKUSHIMA – The Japanese police arrested a bus driver on May 7 on suspicion of negligent driving after a crash on a Fukushima expressway killed a high school student the previous day, as investigators probe whether he was speeding and driving without the proper licence required to carry passengers for hire.

On May 8, the Fukushima prefectural police searched bus operator Kanbara Tetsudo in Gosen, Niigata prefecture. The arrested driver, Tetsuo Wakayama, 68, told investigators he was driving at 90 to 100km per hour at the time in the 80kmh-zone, according to the police.

The police are investigating possible violations over unlicensed commercial operations, as it was found that Wakayama did not hold the type of licence required to drive passengers for hire.

The police said Wakayama confessed to having “misjudged the speed”. No significant skid marks were found at the crash site on the Banetsu Expressway in Koriyama, according to the police.

Wakayama is suspected of causing the bus carrying 20 members of the boys’ tennis team of Niigata’s Hokuetsu High School to crash into a guardrail on the expressway on the morning of May 6.

One of the students, Hiroto Inagaki, 17, was killed and 20 people were injured, including two people in another vehicle and Wakayama himself.

Kanbara Tetsudo President Kazuhiro Shigeno told a news conference on the night of May 6 that the school asked the company to arrange a bus, and a sales staff member hired the driver through an acquaintance without checking his driving history. In leasing the vehicle from a rental-car firm, the staff member submitted their own driver’s licence instead of Wakayama’s.

However, the school said in a separate news conference on the night of May 7 that the tennis team’s adviser denied the operator’s claim that the school requested the bus arrangement. KYODO NEWS