Police have said they will not interview the driver of the National Express coach driver which overturned at motorway services yesterday until he is well enough.
The single-decker coach clipped a kerb, hit a lampost and a tree and toppled over on to the driver’s side as it entered Newport Pagnell services on the southbound stretch of the M1 at about 4pm.
The 34-year-old driver, who had to be cut free from the wreckage, was breath-tested at the scene and arrested shortly afterwards on suspicion of drink-driving and dangerous driving. Thames Valley Police say the driver is from West Bromwich.
Collision investigators were today conducting a fingertip search of the area. The coach was removed from the scene overnight.
Police are appealing for anyone who saw the vehicle, travelling from Digbeth Coach Station, Birmingham, to Stansted and Luton Airport, or the crash to contact them.
Four patients remain at Northampton General Hospital, including the driver, a 45-year-old woman from New Shrewsbury, who has a dislocated elbow, shoulder and facial injuries, a 60-year-old man from Goussanoville in France, who is being treated for cuts to his head, and a 28-year-old man from Coventry, who is suffering a cracked knee.
Two patients remain at Milton Keynes General Hospital - a 57-year-old woman from Victoria, Australia, and a 20-year-old man from Gdansk, Poland.
The two patients being treated at the JR2 in Oxford are a 39-year-old woman from Worcester, who has a head injury, and a 61-year-old man from Kenilworth, Warwickshire, who is suffering from serious arm injuries, a broken pelvis and facial injuries.
The chief executive of National Express has stressed there would be full co-operation with the police following the crash..
Richard Bowker said the firm was "absolutely obsessed" with safety. Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Mr Bowker said: "This is now a police investigation. We will fully co-operate with that and obviously we need to learn the detail of this ourselves as quickly as possible."
Put to him that it seemed "odd" that the coach overturned following the clipping of the kerb, he said: "The safety record of the coach is absolutely superb and we need to understand why this did happen.
"We randomly test and those random tests mean it is extremely likely that you will be caught by a random test at some point. We are absolutely obsessed about safety, we take it extremely seriously."
Three people died following a crash in January in which a National Express coach overturned on a motorway sliproad.
The vehicle was travelling from Heathrow Airport bound for Glasgow when the accident happened on the junction between the M4 and the M25.
