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THE bus drove into the dark, headed for disaster. By law, it was only supposed to hold 62 passengers. That night, as it trundled through Kenya's cool, verdant forests from Meru, the biggest town in the country's Central Province, bound for the capital Nairobi, there were 94 people on board. In less than an hour over half the passengers and all the crew would be dead. Twenty five miles into its journey, in the shadow of the towering peaks of Mount Kenya, the coach crested the steep hill that twists and turns sharply down to the Nithi Bridge, and began its descent into the river basin.
In the drop down to the Nithi river crossing, the bus picked up speed, shooting above the permitted 80 kilometre an hour limit. The driver was too slow on the brakes to take the corner and overshot the sweep in the road. The bus veered, flying off the tarmac and into thin air; it plunged over one hundred feet into the small river valley, crumpling in the foaming waters of the Nithi. Forty two men, women and children died at the scene. A further 16 died later of their injuries. The accident, which happened on January 7 1998, ranks as Kenya's worst ever crash. The British public have heard virtually nothing about the tragedy. The veil of silence is remarkable given that the bus concerned was run by Stagecoach, the massive Scottish transport company owned by multi-millionaires Ann Gloag and her brother Brian Souter.
Stagecoach, which last year had an annual turnover of #1.5 billion, is now the biggest foreign company in Sweden, a nation with some of the strictest road laws in the world. It is also a major player in the New Zealand transport sector and one of the few UK companies making commercial progress in China. The company is currently completing a major #700 million deal to run Coach USA in the United States. But Africa was its first foreign outpost, and here the company came unstuck.
Eight months after the crash, in September, Stagecoach sold its 95% stake in the Kenya Bus Service to a management consortium for around #3 million. The company says the sale was down to a "deterioration in trading conditions"...