Two transit crashes minutes apart injure 40 in San Francisco

[August 02, 2014]  (Reuters) - Forty people were injured in two separate transit accidents minutes apart in San Francisco on Friday, police said.

In one accident, a bus swerving to avoid a dump truck that had stopped suddenly struck a second dump truck at about 1:30 p.m. local time, the San Francisco Police Department said.

Twenty people were injured and 12 sent to hospital. None was thought to have life-threatening injuries, police said.

Minutes later, a municipal light-rail train and a truck collided after the truck made an illegal turn, police said. The train was knocked several feet off the tracks.

Passenger Robert Williams said the packed train had been slowing as it pulled into the stop, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

"The next thing you know, I heard a loud screech and the train came to a sudden stop," Williams told the newspaper.

Eleven people out of the 20 injured in the crash were sent to hospital, police said. None was in critical condition.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Stephen Powell)

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