An alert driver sacrificed his life to save several others when he deliberately collided his van with another vehicle after a brake failure, to stop it from hurtling down a ghat road.
Police said 18 persons, including 15 councillors of a Panchayat in Karnataka, were returning home in two vans when the driver of the van noticed brake failure in his vehicle at a hairpin bend on the Kallati-Masinagudi Ghat Road and alerted the driver of the van proceeding ahead through mobile phone.
Showing presence of mind, the driver in the front van asked passengers to get down and parked his vehicle across the road so that the van coming from behind would stop on hitting it.
However, fate had it otherwise as the van with brake failure hit the parked van at a higher speed than they anticipated, resulting in both the vehicles capsizing.
Abdullah, who was at the wheels of the second van, died while four passengers suffered severe injuries and have been admitted to a government hospital here, police said.
All the other passengers also suffered minor injuries under the impact of the collision, they said.
