A bus hits 32 vehicles at a red light in Seoul’s commuter belt, and the driver says his brakes failed

At 7.34am on Wednesday (6.34am AWST), a city bus moving through Yatap-dong in Bundang, part of the satellite city of Seongnam, ran into a line of traffic stopped at a signal near a bus stop.

It did not stop. Over the next 100 to 150 metres it hit 32 vehicles, four other buses, a cargo truck and 27 passenger cars, before coming to rest against a median barrier.

South Korea’s National Fire Agency said nine people were seriously injured and 48 suffered minor injuries. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening. Many of the hurt were passengers on the buses, thrown about by the impacts, with cuts and bruises. The driver was trapped, freed and taken to hospital.

Fire authorities set up an emergency medical station at the scene within about 10 minutes, deploying 88 personnel and 33 vehicles. Both directions of the road were closed through the morning commute and reopened once the wreckage was towed.

What does the driver say?

The driver, a man in his 60s who has not been named, told police the brakes had failed. A breath test at the scene was negative for alcohol.

Police say they will examine the cause in full, including whether the driver had taken any drugs, whether the bus had a mechanical defect, its black box data and footage from nearby CCTV cameras.

Early counts varied through the morning as the scope of the crash became clear, with first reports putting the number of vehicles at about 10 and later 17, before officials settled on 32.

Why is this a big deal in South Korea?

Bundang is one of the planned new towns built around Seoul to house its commuters, and its roads carry heavy traffic into the capital every morning. A crash of this scale at 7.30am, on a route packed with buses, is a nightmare scenario for any city that relies on public transport. The closure of both directions through the peak left one of the region’s busiest commuter corridors jammed for hours.

How rare is a crash like this?

Multi-vehicle pile-ups of this size usually happen on motorways, in fog or ice, where cars run into stopped traffic at speed. This one happened on a city street, at a red light, in clear morning traffic, and was set off by a single vehicle. That is why the brake claim matters: if a mechanical fault is confirmed, questions will turn to how the bus was maintained and inspected; if it is not, they will turn to the driver.