JAUNDICED EYE
Truck owners have been warned that they will compelled to take personal responsibility for road accident carnage that their employees cause. The warning, from an activist organisation, was triggered by a spate of truck related disasters over the past month.
A truck and bus accident in Mpumalanga took the lives of 18 people. Near East London, four were killed in a head-on truck collision. In Durban, two died when a car drove into a broken down truck. On the N8 outside Bloemfontein, six were killed and 50 injured when bus rear-ended another broken down truck.
Our road accident statistics, in general, are appalling, with transport-related injuries among the 10 biggest causes of death in South Africa. In 2015, road accidents cost an estimated R143bn, about 3.4% of GDP, with 70% of that being the cost of human casualties.
In 2016, just over 14,000 people died on the roads. As a rule of thumb, one can multiply the mortality statistic by five to estimate the serious injuries, and by 15 for minor injuries.
In Australia, which once had worse statistics than SA, 5.3 people per 100,000 of population die on the roads each year. In Europe, that is 9.3. In Africa, with some of the worst road s in the world, it is 26.6. In South Africa, with the best roads in Africa, it is 25.1