Two dead and 16 injured, three of them serious, an investigation opened: what we know about the bus accident in Ain

A regional bus left the road on Friday morning south of Bourg-en-Bresse (Ain), killing a 7-year-old girl and an 18-year-old young man, a currently unexplained accident which causes “great trauma” according to the Minister of Transport. The hospitalized driver has not yet been able to be heard, said the prosecution, which opened an investigation into road homicide, entrusted to the gendarmes.

The accident occurred around 7:30 a.m. on the D22 departmental road in the town of Lent. The bus chartered by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region carried around fifty passengers and had left Lyon two hours earlier in the direction of Bourg-en-Bresse. At this stage, “we do not have (...) the necessary perspective and sufficient testimony to explain the cause of this accident”, indicated the Minister of Transport Philippe Tabarot, during a press briefing on site.

“There is above all a great trauma”

The driver, who had to be extricated, underwent saliva tests and “it seems that the first results were negative,” he added. The vehicle was “in very good condition” and the driver, “young” and “new” in this transport company inspected 106 times since 2024, had already tested negative during an unannounced check in mid-October, the minister said. The provisional toll is two dead, three people in absolute emergency with doctors “who are doing everything to save them” and around twenty injured, and “above all there is great trauma”, detailed Philippe Tabarot.

The bus “left the road and hit a tree in the ditch”, previously reported Yves Cristin, the mayor of Lent, a town of 1,200 inhabitants crossed by the departmental road. The regional weekly La Voix de l'Ain published a photo showing the bus in a ditch visibly on the other side of its axis of circulation, and the front embedded in trees.

A large white tent was set up to facilitate the work of the emergency services, according to AFP journalists. Jean-François Débat, mayor and president of the Bourg-en-Bresse agglomeration, speaks of a “well-maintained” road with “a slope, a slight turn to the right”. This line is heavily used in the morning by workers or students. The Minister of Education Édouard Geffray declared from a high school in the Paris region “to have a thought for these students, for their families”. “For us it is always a test when our students, when our children are victims of accidents of this nature,” he added.

Around a hundred firefighters mobilized on site

An association, Avema-France victims 01, was notably dispatched to support the victims and their loved ones and reported “people in shock, stunned” by the tragedy and taken care of in the community hall of the town where a psychological unit is in place. “We see this as a failure, but we will not give up trying to make transport by coach or bus in our country even safer,” concluded the Minister of Transport. In total, around a hundred firefighters, around fifty police officers were deployed on site, drones and four helicopters were mobilized to respond to this tragedy.

Public transport accidents are relatively rare. In December 2017, a collision between a school bus and a train killed six schoolchildren and injured 17 in Millas in the Pyrénées-Orientales, causing immense emotion. The driver of the bus was sentenced on appeal in 2025 to five years in prison, two of which were spent under an electronic bracelet.

More recently, in January 2025, a high school student was killed and 20 students injured when a school bus, whose driver had taken drugs, overturned on a track near Châteaudun (Eure-et-Loir).