A not anonymous shadow hero
Immediately after the terrible accident, the Flemish public transport company congratulated its driver for the composure he showed. She celebrated him as an ordinary hero, a modest good Samaritan whose daily courage brought honor to the very idea of public service. The press went into action when it realized that this shadowy hero is not really an anonymous person. Behind the wheel of this now scrapped bus was Jerko Tipuric, 64, a former professional footballer who had enjoyed the glory days of Cercle de Bruges, first as a player, then as a coach. Arriving from his native Croatia in 1989, he acquired Belgian nationality in 1998. When the world of football no longer wanted him, he did not leave Flanders. Nor even West Flanders. The accident took place in Zeldegem. A handful of kilometers from the Jan Breydel stadium where Cercle still plays. His Circle.
Jerko Tipuric would undoubtedly have wanted to remember Flanders in other circumstances and for other reasons. But his story moved people. Daily life The Latest News and the VTM channel even decided to include him at the last minute in the list of 100 personalities nominated for the title of Belgian of the year 2024. A list in which is Tom Waes who, however, could have been exfiltrated. The star presenter also made headlines this week for a traffic accident story. But not as a hero. Drunk after a drunken meal, he got behind the wheel of his Porch and crashed into a road sign, causing serious injuries. Tipuric saved lives. Waes took the risk of removing it.
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More than a million kilometers on the clock
The mishap of which Jerko Tipuric was the hero also earned a strong challenge from the Minister of Mobility in the Flemish Parliament. At the center of the discussion? Inevitably the state of the public carrier’s vehicle fleet. The damaged bus was purchased in 2005 – 19 years ago. It had more than 1 million kilometers on the odometer. De Lijn staff members said it had small defects, such as a little play in the steering wheel or abnormal vibrations in the windows. The Flemish Minister of Mobility denied these rumors, saying that the vehicle had been fully inspected and could hit the road.
-But she had to admit that the age of the buses was starting to pose a problem. Asked to take stock of the public carrier’s vehicle fleet, she admitted that half of the 2,138 De Lijn buses currently in service are more than 10 years old – for an average age of 10.2 years. And that almost 10% have the same age as the damaged bus, or even older. An obsolescence which is not without consequences for the reliability of buses. There is normal wear and tear of the mechanical parts that make up the vehicles. There is the difficulty of being able to replace them on older models. Mechanics sometimes have to pull their hair out to get the old cuckoos rolling. But not everywhere. With the introduction of LEZ (Low Emission Zone) zones in very large urban centers, older vehicles are gradually transferred to active depots in rural or semi-rural regions. “It is no coincidence that the breakdown happened in Zeldegem“, raised a colleague of Jerko Tipuric.
Annick De Ridder promised the arrival of 1,000 new buses by the end of the legislature.
