I'm starting to wonder if this is some form of sick cosmic joke that keeps recurring in a “Groundhog day” type scenario on the roads in South Africa.
It really seems that a week cannot go by without some or other bus going off a bridge or a taxi head on collision resulting in numerous deaths.
Not so long ago we had that daft human jumping a train crossing in Cape Town killing most of the kids in his minibus (having justly being found guilty) and now just this morning there were ten or so people....let me emphasize that TEN people killed up in Limpopo.
This is no joke, far far from it.
Towards the end of last year when the Western Cape had a series of horrendous accidents the Western Cape Transport MEC Robin Carlisle said that "Plans are underway to consult with the appropriate experts to find ways of further reducing the chances of these tragedies from happening."
Does it take an 'expert' to notice that the one common denominator in these accidents are taxi's? Now I clearly have no time for these driving death traps and everyone has had at least one incident with them can understand the sheer recklessness they go about their daily commutes. Also in general South Africans seem to have a mental blockage when it comes to the rules of the road, but this does not take away from the fact that minibus taxis are 'murdering' people in ever increasing quantities.
It would be a grizzly statistic to see the actually percentage of deaths from taxi's related accidents out of the total year figure...I'm sure it would be a telling stat.
Why is it proving so hard to monitor and get these guys off the roads?
Almost daily, as I head down through Woodstock in Cape Town, there are police pulling these guys off the roads, checking licenses and roadworthiness. Paper fines mean nothing, who's going to track them down, Not the cops they got bigger fish to fry.
The solution? Not easy.
ten innocents dead....unfortunately they won’t be the last.
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