Three road accidents killed at least 36 people in three Chinese provinces over the weekend. 

Just before noon on Sunday, state media reported three people were killed - one of them confirmed dead on the spot - after a bus carrying 16 people plunged into a reservoir bank in Lishui, Zhejiang province. 

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Authorities said the bus hit a highway fence that made the driver lose control over the wheel.  Reports said 13 others were injured but are now in stable condition. 

On Saturday evening, another bus plunged into a ravine, this time in Nayong County, in the southwestern province of Guizhou.  Twenty one people were killed and three others were injured. 

Initial investigation revealed the bus driver chose to ply along a mountain road where only small vehicles were allowed to pass.  The bus went out of control and plummeted 100 meters into a dry riverbed.   

Also on Saturday, another 12 people were killed after a farm vehicle zigzagged while making a turn on a mountain road in Kangle County, Gansu province.  Five others were reportedly injured.  The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

These three incidents mark the latest in transportation-related accidents in China.  Road accidents are common in China particularly in rural areas where overloading and basic traffic rules are frequently ignored. The government had reported that 22 of every 100,000 Chinese people die from road accidents.  

Figures from the Ministry of Public Security revealed nearly 90,000 people were killed in 426,000 cases of road accidents from January to October last year.  That number represents a 1.9 percent increase in the number of deaths from the same period in 2013. A study by British experts also showed that road accidents has overtaken cancer as a top killer among Chinese people.  

Aside from drivers' error, China's poor road condition also contributes to the high number of road accidents resulting to significant number of casualties.

According to a study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in the U.S., China took the 44^th spot in 193 countries ranked in terms of road deaths. The top three countries that have the highest road fatalities are Namibia, Thailand  and Iran.

Tagsroad accidents, Zhejiang, Gansu