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| Another day, another crash on the N3, South Africa's busiest highway. |
CONGRATULATIONS if you are reading this — it means you survived the
annual road carnage during the Easter Holidays.
To make sure you and your loved ones continue to do so, follow
these tips.
Do the checklist
Before departing, check the brakes, pump the
tyres, top up the oil and water and clean the blades of the wipers.
Just don’t speed
At Wheels
we often here arguments from boys wearing to much gel in their hair that
it is not the speed that kills you, but the stopping.
One can only hope these kamikaze drivers do not
breed, as the human gene pool does not need more stupid people.
For the fact is that all the active and passive safety systems in
modern cars are only good for crashes at under 60 km/h.
The only way to keep the human body from being torn apart by the
forces of a high speed crash at 120 km/h is to strap in very tight in a racing
harness cosseted inside a racing roll cage.
Driving sedately also improves your fuel consumption a lot, so that
you don’t pay a rand a kilometre to get there.
Travel lightly
A vehicle travelling at 112 km/h with four
people in it takes over 90 metres to stop, if the driver reacts within a second
to brake and the tyres are good.
Load up this vehicle and add a trailer and it
will cover the length of a soccer pitch before stopping.
That is over a dozen car lengths that will
flash by in a few breathless seconds. The tip — again — is to slow down to
arrive alive.
Avoid the rush
Make the journey the destination.
Neither the beach nor that holiday cottage is
going anywhere, so stop at all the scenic spots and quaint towns to discover the
beauty of South Africa, and sleep over halfway where possible.
That way the crowds will disperse before you get
there.
KZN Transport MEC Mxolisi Kaunda summed up the situation when he
said road safety is our collective responsibility. Following these basic tips
will make you one of SA’s elite and — more importantly — alive drivers, and not
one of the irresponsible drivers who speed, often in overloaded vehicles, to
their early deaths.
The Road Traffic Management Corporation confirmed speed and
overloading were again the main causes of fatal crashes during the past Easter
weekend, with unroadworthy vehicles third on the list of causes of a crash.
• Report problems on the N3 by contacting the
24-hour N3TC Helpline on 0800 63 4357 or tweet to @N3Route.
