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A freak traffic accident could have cost 20 people their lives had one of them not acted bravely in time to stop the chartered bus they were on from plunging down a cliff in Shatin, New Territories, on Wednesday (October 3).
The scene was outside a memorial hall on Yau On Street in Tai Wai, Shatin. The chartered bus was parked on the sloping road while the driver stood close by, waiting to take a family in mourning and their relatives and close friends to a nearby cemetery to bury the father, who recently passed away.
At about 9:30 am the bus suddenly started rolling down the slope toward the cliff off the T-section ahead, causing dozens of people waiting to board and those already on it to panic, while the driver could only watch in despair as the “unmanned” vehicle gathered momentum toward a crushing end at the bottom of the ravine below.
At the nick of the moment, the elder daughter-in-law of the deceased, who sat right behind the driver’s seat, got her nerves together and jumped in the driver's seat to stomp hard on the brake while also pulling back the hand brake. It eventually stopped at the edge of the cliff after a 70-metre free run in 10 seconds, but not before knocking down three steel pillars, a telephone junction box, a metal fence and some brushes in that order.
After the runaway vehicle fully stopped just about one metre away from the edge of the cliff, all those on board threw themselves in one another's arms. Some of them, including the brave woman and her widowed mother-in-law, shed quite some happy tears together. ■春生 資深翻譯員
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