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| A scene seen all too often in South Africa. |
You too, would be far safer in bed while the Verstappen-wannabees, distracted dads and sudden slews of traffic officers turn the working drivers’ smooth traffic flow into a constant concertina of sudden stops and starts.
Then there are the real time bombs on the road — young taxi drivers who told me they make two trips between Durban and Johannesburg in one day over the December period. Its a journey of some 590 km, depending on which taxi rank are used in Johannesburg and Durban, which means they are driving just under 2360 km in 24 hours at an average speed of 98 km/h.
Now, that sounds low, but as any racer will tell you, an average of 70 km/h means you have to go twice as fast after every stop, ergo 140 km/h.
Asked how fast they drive, one drivers moved his index finger in a halfcircle, saying "we take the needle all the way over". In a 2,4 petrol engined Siaya taxi, this means they manage close to 170 km per hour on long downhill, almost double the speed limit for vehicles carrying passengers.
Asked what they do when one they are pulled off, the grinning young men say they drive the same taxis in convoy and no one has a front numberplate, so when one is pulled off, others stop and challenge the traffic officer to show photograpic proof which taxi broke the speed limit. Then they rush off again.
Mostly they arrive alive, showing that F1, World Rally Championships and Dakar team managers are missing a lot of untapped driving talent hanging around at South Africa's taxi ranks. But when the littlest thing go wrong at the speeds they maintain, we get those "14 burn to death in crash" headlines.
SA's reckless driver problem
Gung-ho taxi drivers are part of a reckless driver problem that places South Africa second only to Thailand on a world list of countries with the most road accident deaths, according to research by Zutobi, an international driver education company.
Hence, instead of trotting out the usual — and mostly ignored — advice on driving safely this festive season, we asked paramedics and toll operators where and when not to drive in order to arrive alive in KwaZulu-Natal this festive season.
Russel Meiring, corporate communication officer for ER24, said the company’s paramedics in KZN expect the most serious collisions on the N3 and N2. This means the entire N3, all the way from Gauteng to Durban. Meiring said the Durban CBD will also see high volumes of traffic with a corresponding rise in collisions as tourists and residents jostle for space.
When to drive the N3
According to the N3 Toll Concessionaire (N3TC), the N3 will be busiest from 9 am to 12 am today and tomorrow, with traffic slowing from noon to 6 pm, when the flow picks again up to 9 pm.
After the new year parties the N3 will likely see the same high volumes on January 2 to 3, with highest traffic volumes up to noon, less traffic between 12 pm and 3 pm, when it will again get busy up to 6 pm.
If historic patterns hold true in these strange, post lockdown times, the best time to drive on the N3 is therefore between noon and 3 pm.
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| What truckers fear: distracted dads and Verstappen-wannebees who come racing during festive season. |
Causes of crashes
As Sir Lewis Hamilton learned this year, the danger of reckless drivers who do not match themselves to the traffic flow cannot be overstated, not only to fellow road users, but to themselves.
Transport engineer at the N3TC, Miles le Roux stated on the toll operator’s website that 45% of the crashes recorded on the N3 Toll Route during the first ten months of this year were single vehicle crashes.
The N3TC’s statistics show such single vehicle crashes are mostly attributed to poor decision-making by the driver, who misjudged corners, made dangerous manoeuvres, failed to recognise threats, did not pay constant attention to the road ahead, or were speeding.
Vehicle failure was the second highest cause of crashes, with tyre bursts, mechanical or brake failures leading to 13% of car crashes and 17% of all truck crashes.
Roux said it is equally important to note that most crashes on the N3 (over 80%) occur in clear weather; with only 11,5% of the total number of crashes between January and October 2021 having occurred in rain and only 6,3% having been attributed to poor visibility as a result of fog or overcast conditions.
Eastern Cape most dangerous
Motorists who want to travel out of KwaZulu-Natal need to study the Road Traffic Management Corporation’s list of high accident road sections (listed below).
The corporation uses a formula to determine the most deadly roads by counting fatal crashes per road from December 1 to January 11 for the past three festive periods and giving the most current festive period a weight of 60%, the preceding festive season 30% and season before that 10%.
Based on this three-year average, six of South Africa’s most dangerous roads are in the Eastern Cape, three are in Limpopo and one is in the Free State. Our own experience is that the road with the most reckless drivers, donkeys and goats in South Africa is the N2 highway between East London and Butterworth, passing through Dutywa. Do not drive this section of the N2 at night — ever — and be very afraid of drivers who pass trucks on blind hills during the day.
