13 killed as pickup carrying wedding guests crushed on Java highway

A pickup carrying wedding guests was crushed between two trucks on a busy highway in Indonesia’s main island of Java, killing 13 people and injuring five others. The crash on the northern coastal highway near Kiajaran Kulon village in Indramayu regency turned a family return trip into one of the country’s latest mass-casualty road tragedies.

Police chief Undang Syarif Hidayat said the victims were riding in an open-bed pickup truck after attending a wedding in neighboring Parean village. As the vehicle slowed and stopped near a median opening to make a U-turn, a wing-box truck traveling in the same direction struck it from behind, with a second truck also involved in the collision. The force of the impact left the pickup pinned in the chain of vehicles on the highway.

Authorities have opened an investigation to determine the exact cause of the crash, including whether negligence, speeding or other traffic violations played a role. The collision also raises the same question that follows many deadly crashes in Indonesia: why passengers were in an open-bed pickup on a major highway in the first place, and whether a more tightly enforced transport system might have kept a celebratory trip from becoming a fatal one.

Indonesia has long struggled with road safety, where overloaded vehicles, poor road safety measures and weak compliance with traffic rules frequently contribute to fatal crashes. The government has been pushing a “Zero ODOL” policy aimed at curbing oversized and overloaded trucks, which officials say are a major safety hazard and a source of heavy damage to roads and bridges. The crash in Indramayu fits squarely inside that wider pattern, where unsafe vehicles, risky maneuvers and crowded corridors repeatedly combine with deadly results.

The scale of the problem remains stark. In 2021, the World Health Organization estimated about 31,000 road-traffic deaths in Indonesia, a toll that underscores how quickly a routine journey can turn lethal on highways such as the one near Kiajaran Kulon.