Eight people died in a pile-up on the M1 motorway near Győr, in western Hungary, about 122 kilometres west of Budapest. The accident happened on Friday morning, and among the victims, according to Hungarian authorities, there are no local citizens - all are foreigners.

The sequence of events is brutal in its simplicity. First a truck with Moldovan plates hit construction machinery stopped at the 115th kilometre, setting the cab on fire, after which the flames spread to the load. Soon afterwards, a minibus with nine passengers, also with Moldovan plates, slammed into the stopped truck.

The toll is heavy: seven killed in the collision between the minibus and the truck, one more victim from the initial accident with the construction machine, and two injured. Firefighters from Győr stopped the fire from spreading any further. The Hungarian prime minister confirmed that the victims were foreign nationals, but did not specify their nationalities.

Behind every figure like this stands something the Balkans knows all too well - people on the road, far from home, travelling for work or for a life better than the one they left. Moldovan plates on a motorway in Hungary tell the whole story of a region people leave. How many of our own are on those same roads every day, in those same minibuses, towards those same uncertain destinations?