M40 Motorway - Notable Events

Notable Events

• Twelve school children and a teacher died when their minibus crashed into a parked motorway maintenance vehicle just after midnight on 18 November 1993. The inquest recorded a verdict of accidental death for all of the victims but noted that none of the children were wearing seatbelts and that the side-facing bench seating was dangerous. Seatbelts were subsequently made compulsory equipment on all coaches and minibuses (more than 20 years after they had been compulsory on cars). It has been compulsory for passengers to wear seatbelts on coaches and minibuses since 2006.

• A motor cycle rider was shot dead between junctions 13 and 12 on 12 August 2007. The victim was a member of the Hells Angels on his way home from the Bulldog Bash. In October 2008, a man pleaded guilty to murder ahead of the trial of six other men on charges of murder and firearms offences.

• Jimmy Davis, a 21-year-old Watford footballer on loan from Manchester United, died on a stretch of the M40 in Oxfordshire in the early hours of 9 August 2003 after his BMW collided with a lorry. The footballer was over the drink-drive limit and had been driving at speeds of up to 120 miles per hour (190 km/h).

• In 2002 more than 100 vehicles were involved in a pile-up near High Wycombe that resulted in two deaths.

• On the 18th July 2012, a woman driver in her sixties died, after being burnt alive, in an inferno sparked by a Porsche, which crashed into back of her car after she broke down in middle lane.