Police are using video footage of gory traffic accidents to persuade young South
Africans to be more responsible
Paul Kirk
School pupils and business people in Durban are being shown shocking video footage of traffic accidents in a bid to make them more responsible drivers
and it seems to be working.
Top traffic policeman Principal Provincial Inspector Mervyn Atwell travels with
a video camera as well as his copy of the Road Traffic Act.
Overloaded trucks smashing into other trucks and plunging across oncoming traffic make for shocking video and it is intended to.
Atwell got the idea from colleagues in Australia where road accident figures
declined enormously after traffic officers showed drivers the most horrific accident footage imaginable.
The gore scared many drivers out of complacency. Video footage on national television in Australia showed the horrific consequences of high-speed vehicle
smashes all in colour and close-up.
Atwell has a collection of videos that have been shown to many Durban schoolchildren. According to their teachers, they have had the desired effect.
Young drivers are instantly shocked into driving at sensible speed.
Some of the opening scenes of the video show an ambulance driver carrying a driver’s dismembered calf and foot back to the crash scene 20m away.
Another scene shows a slab of raw meat that was once a calf muscle. The leg was
ripped apart as the driver flew through the windscreen of his truck. Despite
being airlifted to hospital, he died the next day.
Says Atwell: “We actually need a full-time crew to go out and shoot this sort of stuff and then show it. It is shocking, but very effective. It makes people realise the consequences of disobeying the laws. It shows what happens when people disregard basic safety rules.”
So far the footage has only been shown to a few schools that have invited Atwell
and his department to give a presentation. But if Atwell had his way, the footage would be seen by many more drivers.
A recent all-out blitz on overloaded and unroadworthy vehicles has shown that,
no matter how reputable the transport company, they pretty much all get up to no good.
Last week a major national transport company that mocks its more blue-collar
competitors in TV adverts was caught out with a dangerously overloaded truck.
Atwell, the traffic chief who looks after some of the most dangerous areas of
the N3 officially the busiest stretch of road in Africa has bust virtually
all of the blue-chip transport companies.
A vehicle belonging to a major national company that moves fuel for major petrol
companies was also recently bust by Atwell’s men. He has a video showing one of
their fuel tankers without any HazChem signs on the side. These signs notify
emergency services personnel what is in the tanker and what to do if it spills.
“It is not that the big name companies never do it. They simply do it less
often.”
Atwell says, according to national Department of Transport statistics, a whopping 87% of all traffic law enforcement nationwide occurs in KwaZulu-Natal.
Much of this occurs in Atwell’s enforcement area, the stretch of the N3 from
Durban to Cato Ridge.
Since March his officers have been going all out targeting unroadworthy and overloaded vehicles.
Unroadworthy vehicles claim a shocking toll in terms of human life. Overloaded
vehicles, especially trucks, cost the country a shocking sum in terms of the
infrastructure they destroy.
Says Atwell: “In 1998 statistics showed that some 9% of South Africa’s national
road infrastructure had been damaged by overloaded trucks. Now it is over 35%.
Overloaded trucks are costing the country a fortune. And we cannot afford to
keep repairing roads. We need to stop the cause of the damage.”
According to Atwell there are a number of reasons for this dramatic increase in
the damage to our roads. No single cause can be highlighted, but he points out
several.
Many white males have opted for early retirement from government services and,
using their retirement packages, bought into transport companies. In addition
the railway system is not as efficient as it once was leading to more businessmen putting their products on to trucks.
And with the increased competition among truck drivers, more and more operators
are prepared to take a chance, to overload their trucks in order to deliver more
goods in one trip and by doing so make more money.
According to Atwell, the transport business is now so cut-throat in parts of
Gauteng that KwaZulu-Natal operators have all but been forced out of doing business there.
Knowing that KwaZulu-Natal traffic police have adopted a “zero tolerance” policy, Durban-based operators are mostly too scared to run overloaded trucks to the coast. Those operators that do flout the law face a heavy penalty.
“Big fines, very big ones,” are what Atwell and his men dish out. And according
to Atwell any driver carrying more than six tons too much on their truck will
not be able to pay an admission of guilt fine. Instead they are arrested and
have to appear in court to apply for bail which can sometimes be opposed.
Atwell and his men consider it vital to crack down on the trucks. A major accident on the N3 could be catastrophic particularly if it were to occur near
a residential area.
Every day more than 900 000 litres of petrol and diesel make their way along the
N3. Every day 450 000 litres of highly flammable and potentially explosive
liquid petroleum gas is moved along the road.
Only recently Atwell’s men had a near disaster when a truck overturned on the
road. “The cargo was dimethyl ether. The stuff is used as a propellant in certain types of aerosol. It also has a flash point of -5C: with the right circumstances it can ignite at -5C,” Atwell explains.
“This particular product takes 18 months to reach our shores after being ordered
from the Netherlands. So once it reaches the country it is rushed to the factories in Johannesburg. When this particular shipment landed the transport
company could not move it as they were facing industrial action. They had to
pass it on to another contractor, who in turn passed it on again. Anyway, the
load was being rushed and the truck overturned.”
Every day more than 6 000 different types of products are moved on the N3. Some
of them are harmless. But a truck carrying harmless cargo could collide with one
carrying an explosive payload and cause a near holocaust.
Some of the drivers are not up to scratch either. Atwell recently attended a
scene where a large amount of fruit juice had been spilled in a crash. The driver had been driving at excessive speed. It was his third crash in six weeks.
It was also the third truck the driver had destroyed in the same period.
“When we contacted the owner, he said I should pass on the message that he never
wanted to see the driver again,” says Atwell.
As part of Atwell’s checks, the trucks are loaded on to a sophisticated machine
that tests the efficiency of the brakes. Last week he had a truck with only 7%
braking efficiency on the right hand side of the vehicle only.
“Should this truck have been involved in an emergency braking situation it would
have been horrendous. The vehicle would have swerved to the right into oncoming traffic.”
It is not only transport operators who put death traps on the roads. Taxis and
buses sometimes defy description.
Says Vijen Murugan, the representative for the provincial Road Traffic Inspectorate: “We are of course showing operators no mercy at all. But we also
encourage the public to boycott unsafe vehicles. Some of the wrecks we have out
there are unbelievable.”
Murugan says his men had found buses without petrol tanks: “One example had a
large plastic drum on the back seat. This fed petrol through a hosepipe to the
engine. Clearly this could have ignited at any time.
“We also have vehicles operating without the seats properly secured to the floor
the passengers and driver could all fly through the window if an emergency
stop was undertaken.
“But what tops it all is the steering devices people use. We have found people
driving buses buses that transport the public without steering wheels.
“We have found drivers using a monkey wrench secured to the steering column to
steer. People operating such vehicles can expect us to show no mercy at all.”