One Dead After Bus and Two Cars Collide on Victoria's Melba Highway
A man driving a white car died at the scene of a three-vehicle crash involving a commercial bus on the Melba Highway at Glenburn at about 2.40pm on Thursday, 24 September.
Emergency services responded on the highway near Two Hills Road in Victoria's Yarra Ranges. Victoria Police confirmed the death.
The bus and the other car
Police believed 18 people, including the driver, were on the bus. Operator Mee's Bus Lines said it was the scheduled 1pm service from Mansfield to Melbourne The Guardian. The second car was a blue Toyota. Its driver and passenger sustained minor injuries. The bus driver was not seriously injured.
Paramedics assessed 21 patients at the scene. A teenage boy was flown in a serious condition to The Alfred hospital with upper body injuries. A man in his 50s was taken by ambulance to Box Hill Hospital with serious injuries. A teenage girl and a teenage boy were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Sixteen other patients did not require emergency treatment or transport ABC News.
Emergency response and road closure
An Air Ambulance Victoria helicopter and Advanced Life Support units, paramedics with higher-level medical training, assisted at the scene. Crews remained there until about 4.30pm. The highway was closed between Castella and Yea. Detectives from the Major Collision Investigation Unit, the specialist police team that reconstructs serious crashes, attended. This section of the Melba Highway was ranked the sixth most dangerous in Victoria in an RACV survey this year ABC News.
The broader context here is what the casualty numbers suggest about scale. Eighteen people thought to be on the bus, plus three car occupants, accounts for the 21 patients assessed. Four hospital transports, one death, two minor injuries, and 16 people not needing emergency transport points to a forceful collision with effects spread across vehicles, rather than severe injury concentrated inside the bus.
In my view, that distribution shapes the aftermath for hospitals, police and the operator, from notifying families to supporting passengers who were shaken but not badly hurt.
Looking at what this means for the road and the investigation, a danger ranking does not establish cause in this case. It helps explain why attention will turn to conditions on that stretch, to vehicle movements before impact, and to how a scheduled regional service shares a two-lane highway with other traffic. The presence of the Major Collision Investigation Unit signals a careful, piece-by-piece reconstruction. For travellers who depend on the Mansfield to Melbourne link, an extended closure or any safety findings could affect that service.
