Driving school owner Nuri Geçoglu (29) will not soon forget this Monday. The images he made of the accident in Bergen op Zoom, in which a train drove a bus in half, went viral. He was taking a driving lesson when a bus got stuck at the railroad crossing just in front of his car. While filming, he got out to see if he could help. A few tenths later, came the massive blow. “It went so fast, very intense!”
Driving instructor Nuri from Bergen op Zoom was taking a driving lesson when his student wanted to turn left from the Wattweg onto the Marconilaan in order to cross the railway. Only that didn’t work, the bus was already stuck at the level crossing. “It was already getting quite busy at the intersection and I asked my student to stand still for a while.”
Shortly after the barriers of the level crossing go down, Nuri starts filming with his phone and gets out. “I wanted to check if there was anyone else on the bus and see if I could help.” A few tenths later the train rams into the bus. “I was in shock when I sat in the car, but wanted to do something anyway.”
“It would have been a disaster if there had been children in it.”
In those few seconds that Nuri can see in and through the bus from a distance, he is relieved to see that the driver has left. “I saw him standing on the bike path. When the train hit the bus, I was shocked. But I did realize that probably no one would be really injured.”
After the huge blow, the driving instructor hears that it could have ended very differently. “I heard that this bus is normally full of school children. You can’t imagine what would have happened if they had been on it. That would have been a disaster.”
“The most bizarre thing I’ve experienced as an instructor.”
Nuri shows the bizarre images of the enormous blow to the police officers so that they know exactly what happened. “They filmed it with their phone from my phone.” Not much later, the video of his images went viral on the internet. “Then I also sent the images to my family and friends to show what had just happened to me.”
The video of the instructor of driving school Aegean then went viral. “It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve experienced in eight years of classes.” Nuri gets a lot of reactions, especially from friends who recognize him on the images. But Radio 538 also calls him. “My phone hasn’t stopped working anymore.”
Nuri is especially happy that despite the enormous blow, the damage is material and no one was injured. “It was so intense to see, it really made a big impression on me.” He canceled the driving lesson right after the accident, but after an hour of rest he just worked again.
“It made a big impression on my student.”
The driving instructor later called his student to ask how things were going. “It also made a big impression on her.” The images of the accident are forever on Nuri’s retina, but he did not want to abandon his students. “I finished my last lesson at nine.”
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