On 10 January 2006, a tour bus crashed 46 kilometres north of Cairo, Egypt. The bus was travelling in heavy rain and fog when it ran off the Desert Highway.
The bus was part of a two-vehicle convoy carrying 80 police officers and emergency service workers and their families, from Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory. The passengers were returning to Cairo after a visit to the El Alamein battlefield. The tour is understood to have been part of a cultural exchange organised by the Egyptian Federation of Victoria.
In total, six people died and a further 27 were injured.
The Coroner who investigated the crash identified a number of contributing factors to the accident and the number of casualties:
- the lack of seat belts
- the poor design of the bus roof
- the absence of an electronic stability program (ESP)
- driver fatigue.
Due to the loss of Australian lives, this event has been included in this dataset.