Twenty past eight in the morning, the expressway from Gradsko towards Prilep, right by Gradsko itself. An Audi with Bitola plates and a Hyundai registered in Skopje end up inside one another. The result: nine injured people in two vehicles.

Two are seriously hurt - the Hyundai's driver, a 48-year-old from Skopje, and a 45-year-old female passenger, also from Skopje. Both were transferred to clinics in the capital. The other seven got away with lighter injuries and were treated at the General Hospital in Veles.

The Audi was carrying a group of young people. A 44-year-old woman from Bitola was driving, with four young men travelling with her - two aged 18 and two aged 17, all from Bitola. The Bitola group was released to recover at home the same day.

„A complicated fracture of the forearm”

The hospital in Veles confirmed that two emergency crews were sent out. The hospital's spokesperson, Dr Anamarija Dzundzeva, described the admissions: two patients with more serious injuries were taken in - a woman with facial fractures and a man with a complicated fracture of the right forearm.

Nine injured in a single crash on a fast road is not a number that comes around every day. Nor is it a number that passed through the news as statistics - these are nine families whose morning arrived as a phone call.

The three hours we all paid for

The expressway was closed to traffic. A full inspection at the scene was carried out by an investigation team and police officers from the Veles regional unit, and a public prosecutor was notified. The road reopened at 11:35 - about three hours of blockage on one of the busiest southbound stretches in the country.

Which brings the question nobody asks out loud: how many times does this stretch have to show up in accident reports before somebody opens the subject of the infrastructure itself? An expressway means higher speeds. Higher speeds on a road that local traffic feeds into means a serious outcome from a single lapse.

The investigation will show who did what wrong in those seconds. But while everyone waits, the figure of nine injured on one summer morning stays on the table.