On Wednesday 27 December the approximately 160 year old wall between rue Faubourg Saint Nicolas and the route du Grand Pressigny was hit by the Tours - Preuilly bus and collapsed dramatically into the street. The Saint Nicolas corner is one Preuilly's notorious traffic bottlenecks and vehicles frequently don't keep to their side of the road, despite the warning signs. The damage is considerable.
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| Photo courtesy of London Bruno. |
The bus of course takes this route on a daily basis, but on this particular day the driver was someone unfamiliar with the route. Fortunately the bus was heading from the depot to its first stop at the market place in Preuilly, so didn't have any passengers yet. The bus driver was unhurt in the incident.
Our friend London Bruno was on the scene fairly quickly. He saw big blocks of stone that had been flung several metres and the damaged bus perched up on the stones that had ended up on the bus's side of the carriageway.
I assume the bus encountered another vehicle coming down the hill too fast, and even if the bus had been doing 30 kilometres an hour it is a tricky corner. It would have been all too easy to over compensate and pull too far to the right to avoid a head on collision.
I drove past the scene the next day, by which time the bus had been removed, barriers put up and all the stones corralled. The wall will no doubt be repaired using the old stones so that it looks identical.
Thanks to London Bruno, Fabrice Doucet and other Preuilly residents for their posts and comments on Facebook.
1 comment:
Not necessarily too fast.... I was going from yours via the matket place and then down.... and almost had the same sort of accident with a tractor coming the other way up the hill far too fast. I couldn't "SERREZ A DROIT" any further without entering the front gardens and houses opposite! Fortunately it wasn't one of the HUGE tractors, but it was bouncing all over the shop.... and he was on the 'phone!!
That corner needs traffic lights and alternate flow traffic.... had it been a huge tractor, I would have had to reverse back until it could pass me... our rural towns and villages were designed for slower, smaller stuff in the days of donkeys and carts.
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