More and more accidents are taking lives in South African roads.
Image: Mail and Guardian
As the Easter holidays progress, more and more accidents are being reported and the death toll on South African roads keeps increasing despite the warnings and measures that have been put in place by the police and the government. According to the traffic department, there is a need to improve the safety of everyone on the roads from the figures that were recorded last year. The recorded statistics for 2014 indicate that during the five-day Easter weekend 148 people died on the roads. KwaZulu-Natal had the highest number of fatalities with 39 deaths, followed by Limpopo (23) and Gauteng (22). It however, does not look like there is going to be much of an improvement given that the country has already witnessed at least thirteen deaths on its roads due to easter holiday travel.
In the notorious Limpopo province on Thursday, ten people died on the scene when the two cars they were travelling in collided on the N1 between Naboomspruit and Mokopane. According to the police that attended the scene of the accident, it looks like the driver of the Mitsubishi lost control of his bakkie and this resulted in a head on collision with a minibus. As a result, ten people were killed in the accident. In a statement, the police revealed that three of the ten were children while the rest were adults, with the drivers of the two vehicles among the seven dead. Ronel Otto, who was speaking on behalf of the police, said there were four people who had sustained serious injuries and these were all in the minibus. He added that investigations were continuing and they had opened a case for culpable homicide.
In a separate incident, three people died and two were injured when the vehicle in which they were traveling was found overturned and lying on its roof on Saturday in Vereniging south of Johannesburg. According to the emergency personnel who attended the accident, they found the car on its roof under some power lines on the side of the road. According to Russel Meiring, who is ER24 spokesperson, the bodies of the three were found in the wreckage of the car while the two injured were found outside the car. No clarity could, however be obtained on what the cause of the accident was.
