Swapna Prabhakaran
It is common knowledge that South Africa has one of the highest rates of road death in the world. Less well known, however, is that much of the carnage is caused by trucks and could be prevented if heavy freight vehicle regulations were brought into line with world safety standards.
South Africa has been lagging shamefully behind international standards of road safety, and experts say an expensive and deadly transportation crisis looms ahead.
Alan Jorgensen, of Alfred County Rail in KwaZulu-Natal, says the country’s roads are being abused by unscrupulous people in the freight trucking industry.
People may point fingers at the apparent recklessness of taxis, but the industry is involved in about 12% of road accidents despite carrying nearly 77% of the country’s commuters. Heavy freight vehicles are less numerous, but are far more likely to be in accidents.
Says Jorgensen: “A recent study by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research of the N3 between Van Reenen’s Pass and Durban found that one in eight vehicles on this vital corridor were heavy freight rigs, but one in four accidents involved such vehicles.
“In terms of the cost in human lives, the physical damage to highways and their associated fixtures, closure of roads during post-accident clean-ups (particularly of hazardous chemical cargoes) and delays to other road users, accidents involving heavy road rigs cost far more to the nation than has been previously realised.”
John Schnell, director of the road traffic inspectorate in the Pietermaritzburg area, is in charge of the same stretch of road. He says trucks travelling on the N3 highway between Durban and Johannesburg carry nearly 60% of South Africa’s total imports and exports every year.
“The weights and dimensions permissible for trucks in this country are much higher than in other countries, in Europe, for example,” Schnell says. So trucks in South Africa may legally be carrying loads almost twice as heavy as their counterparts in Europe. And freight companies frequently overload their trucks, sometimes to dangerous levels.
Figures recently compiled by Schnell’s department show a significant percentage of all trucks on the road are overweight. The figures for last month show that nearly 35% of all the trucks weighed were well over the legal limit. This translates into a heavy toll for the roads – the extra burdens deteriorate the quality of the road, often warping the tarmac, causing potholes or bumpy left-hand lanes.
Moira Winslow of the Drive Alive national road safety campaign says the laws regulating safety for trucks are outdated. “Many accidents happen when people drive into a truck at night, because they don’t see it until it is too late.”
She says the reflector lights and chevrons trucks use at night are not enough to make them visible in late-night traffic. “According to the law, there is nothing illegal in parking a truck within the yellow line at night, if you use your chevrons and reflectors. But if a car is driving at 120km per hour with its headlights on, the visibility is only 45m.
“If you see a truck parked ahead of you at that distance, it means you’d only have 1,5 seconds to put your brakes on and come to a standstill. That’s impossible.”
Added to this are the problems of bad driving, speeding, overloading or trucks that overtake other trucks.