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I refer to the article on road safety, on page 74 of your June edition, and wish to comment as follows.

While travelling from Howick in the Natal Midlands to the Mkondeni Testing Centre on the 21st July, I came across an articulated vehicle loaded with steel pipes just near Cedara. It was travelling towards Durban with a slight lean to the right due to the top layer of pipes having shifted in transit, but fortunately held firmly in place by several heavy chains.

An RTI patrol car had just passed this leaning rig but did not seem to have noticed its predicament, probably due to its occupants too busy discussing the meaning of life to notice such trivia!

As I was unable to attract the patrol car's attention due to heavy traffic, I waited until I arrived at the Testing Centre and asked the first traffic officer I came across to please report the matter to one of his patrol cars to investigate, which he promised to do.

Two hours later, I left Pietermaritzburg to travel to Durban Airport. Blow me down, as I got to the top of Key Ridge near Alverston, I came across this very same truck, now with a severe lean to the right as at least half of his load had now shifted and to top it all, this moron was still driving! This begs several questions:

1) Why hadn't this moronic imbecile stopped his severely leaning truck or pulled over to sort the problem out?
2) Why hadn't he been stopped by the cops despite me (and hopefully other motorists too) having reported the matter?
3) Why weren't these pipes properly loaded in the first place?
4) Why aren't there any cops around when you need one?

Once again, I reported the matter to the Traffic Police and hopefully, it was tended to this time around? If just one of those (fortunately) sturdy chains had broken or come loose, we would have had yet another catastrophe on our roads and possibly more human carnage, similar to that so graphically described in your article. It's high time that both companies and individuals alike who enter our public roads with "loaded guns" such as the truck above are locked up and banned from ever driving again. Keep up the good work.

Nick McConnell.
The Kendal Group - Hubers cc
Howick

Editor's Comment: The police have so often made the call for the community to help them in the fight against crime and it is no wonder that the public gets 'gatvol' when incidents such as this are experienced. With public co-operation, traffic officials are, in effect, getting hundreds more eyes out there on the road but if they don't act on information passed on by these 'extra eyes', what's the point? That traffic official to whom you passed on the information should be reprimanded - or perhaps he did pass it on and it wasn't acted on by someone else. Whatever the case, I will pass your letter on to John Schnell, head of the KZN Traffic Inspectorate for follow up. As you say, if just one of those chains had snapped - and I have seen chains snap and loads falling off - we could have had another catastrophe on our roads. It's unacceptable.

As for the 'moronic imbecile' who just kept driving in spite of a dangerous load leaning over, well that goes back to what FleetWatch has, for years, pushed for years - training, training and more training. Or maybe the driver did report the fault to his boss and the boss told him to keep driving to get the load to the customer. That too has happened - and continues to happen out there. Jack Webster has said it so often. What is neede d out there is a change in attitude. If the right attitude towards road safety were embraced by that driver and his boss, you would not have seen what you did. The load would have been originally loaded and secured correctly, the driver would have been told to stop and periodically check the load and if it had shifted - as it had - he would have known what corrective action to take even if it meant waiting on the side of the road for help in correcting the load. If that was the case, the customer would also have been informed that the load would be a little late as it had shifted and therefore presented a danger to others on the road. All the right stuff would have been in place to ensure the safe and effective delivery of product. Aaaargh! It's all so easy so why is it not done?

As for your last point that companies and individuals like this should be locked up and banned from ever driving again, how is this supposed to happen if there are no cops around to do the arrest and locking up - even when they're told about it such as you told them? Eeeeish!

Your comment

The trouble with road safety awareness and campaigns right now is that they are high on emotion but low on solutions. I am really no kind of expert but I have watched South Africa's failing efforts with dismay. As a journalist, I have covered the traffic beat and written on the technologies of motoring. I have dutifully reported the holiday death rates on the roads.

It seems to me that the roll-out of every new campaign - accompanied by official vows of tough action, appeals to motorists and truck drivers, wails of anguish from the media, publicity for the carnage, and much more - simply don't get to the root causes road deaths. Law enforcement is only one of the necessary responses to whole sets of thorny problems. A brief inventory of the causes must include (and the list is not exhaustive):

• Driver recklessness, speeding.

• Poor vehicle maintenance.

• High or irregular traffic volumes.

• Road designs, signage, lighting.

• Climatic and environmental conditions.

• Sleep apnea and inattention.

• Road risks to pedestrians, drunkenness.

• Insufficient regulatory controls...and more.

What this kind of list suggests to me is that not enough is known about each factor to develop strategies to deal with that factor and integrate it into the total picture. We need more research into the structural and practical reasons for accidents, better ongoing information systems, psychological profiling of drivers, total public education linked to law enforcement officer education, and the mobilisation of all state departments, industry and civil society to make road safety a priority.

I know from the work I have done on river safety that there are at least three principles that could and should be applied when analysing road accidents. Believe it or not, white-water rafting pros are experts at applying these principles (without the technologies that I am suggesting for road accidents).

Identify risk sites.
Places where accidents happen can often be identified and the reasons for repeated accidents analysed. Using modern satellite photography technologies, GIS systems and data profiling, one can relate variables such as traffic flows, size of vehicles, times of day, speeds and weather conditions to (fairly) accurately forecast further accidents. Then either road designs can be changed or traffic controls introduced to lessen the risks.

Study near-accidents.
The problem with any real accident is that those involved are often either dead or reluctant to tell the truth, for legal or emotional reasons. Near-accidents, however, produce much more insightful data: people will readily talk of what nearly happened and will volunteer the reasons, even accepting some of the blame. If one knows where the risk sites are, one can observe near-accidents and get eye-witness and participant accounts on the spot. This will produce a range of "hypotheses" for accidents, each of which can be related to the risk site itself and more general factors (like speeding).

Near-accidents are an index:
One can 'guesstimate' that they happen ten times as often as actual accidents. So exposure to the dynamic factors that cause accidents is much higher. In terms of data collection, this is very useful. So, relating risk sites to witness accounts and volumes of accident- and near-accident data will give a picture of BOTH the risk-site features AND the generic features of accident causation.

As an aside, the reason why rivers are fascinating is that they are constantly in process: they create dynamic situations around given obstacles - just like road traffic on given pathways.

In writing my book on Whitewater Rafting (2000), I interviewed many river guides who all had roughly the same principles in mind. We have to predict what MIGHT happen. The 'What If?' factor is basic to river guiding - so anticipation guides action, the range of futures determines the present decision. You don't run that rapid if the water is too high, if the people are too weak or nervous, if you are having a bad day. You do run it if conditions are right. You can't afford to lose anyone! But in the road safety scenario, drivers are not going to stay at home because they don't feel good. Instead, one has to create safety margins around the places where accidents could happen.

One more point: Who goes out on the roads intending to get killed today? Accidents happen! Except for suicides, the average driver expects to live and does not intend either to put an end to himself and his family or to massacre others. This obvious point carries some important implications which seem to be overlooked by the traffic authorities.

Traffic accidents are "caused" by a range of generic and site-specific factors, going much beyond driver irresponsibility. So the solutions don't only lie in targeting the minds and behaviours of drivers or impounding their unsafe vehicles. You can ticket and lock them up all you like but this will not make the carnage go away. In fact, what my points come down to is that the "objective" factors (as opposed to subjective driver factors) should be targeted far more than they are. Road safety research has to focus scientifically on what can be done to reduce the risks posed by the objective factors, while at the same time stepping-up subjective monitoring and controls.

Some of these initiatives are under way but most of them fail for lack of an integrated strategy.
It is all very well to call for action - but what sort of action? South Africa's road safety authorities probably know more than they are letting on - or more than they can handle - and it may be up to a properly constituted research commission to draw the lessons and point the study of road safety in the right directions. Let's stop grinding our teeth and get the mental cogs turning instead.

Graeme Addison
Journalist and Author

Editor's Comment: Wow! There's some deep stuff here and it comes from a man I have a lot of respect for. Apart from being the author of 'Whitewater Rafting', Graham is also the author of that wonderful book 'The Hidden Edge' which highlights South Africa's technology capabilities in a fine way. I also know that Graham was - and probably still is - heavily involved in the safety aspects of river rafting where he investigated many accidents where rafters had died. So what he is outlying above comes from experience rather than theory. He makes some excellent points and I think his letter is worth passing on to the authorities. We'll do that.

My only problem here is that research takes time. It is the right way to go and what Graeme is advocating is all the right stuff. However, 14 000 deaths per year tells me that we need action now. So while we're waiting for the results of research and the actions that emanate from those results, let the Government apply a blanket 'Zero Tolerance' policy across the country and enforce the law with vigour. South Africa has enough laws in place to keep our roads safe. All that's needed is for those laws to be enforced. Surely that will be a good starting point. Start with what you already have and they go out and enhance that with what you still need to get.

Your comment

In the article title 'Tyre Mismanagement' in your May edition, they are talking about the SABS ARP007 Edition 2 1992. Where can I get a copy of this Edition?

Nadia Bester
Fleet Manager
Group 4 Securicor

Editor's Comment: Since others have asked us the same question, here it is. The 'SABS ARP007 Edition 2 1992' can be purchased directly from the SABS in Pretoria at R200 plus VAT. It forms the ideal basis for a fleet tyre maintenance policy.

Your comment

Many thanks for publishing both my letter and the sidebar concerning our air-leak detector in a past edition. Your publication is now a driving force in the industry. Probably the only one that "tells it like it is", no holds barred. It's commendable - don't stop!

As you and your team often get involved in "hands-on" reporting, liaising with traffic authorities, running workshops and so on, I intend sending one of the air leak detectors up to you, with my compliments, to use during your various roadside endeavours. Thanks again for all that you and your team do for our industry. It's sincerely appreciated.

Brian Connell
TOHF Trailers

Editors' Comment: Wow! Thank you so much for those complimentary words. We really appreciate that. As for the air leak detector, we thank you for that as well and assure you it will be put to good use in our next BrakeWatch road-side exercise coming off in the near future. We won't say where as that will warn the miscreants out there. But watch out for it. It's going to happen.

Your comment

After reading the views of John Schnell in a past edition of FleetWatch (March 2006, 'Chief Cop becomes Transporter'), I couldn't help but think that it was nice in those years when Medwoods and W J Bulk were around. The trucks were old work-horses which gleamed in the sunlight and the mere thought of vehicle availability, vehicle utilization, payload utilisation and annual loaded kilometre percentages were never mentioned in the corridors of Medwoods. Some of these vehicles worked two afternoons a week transporting horses around and the rest of the time they were being polished by the loving staff. No wonder they were always in a nice condition.

Fortunately, I am a transport manager who works for a company with a paid-up fleet. Our trucks still do on average 130 000km a year and some are 20 years old. We have not gone for the "new technology" trucks which, I must admit, I envy but these operators who run these latest breed of trucks have a huge bill to pay to keep them on the road.

Making money is not easy in 'Transport Land'. Our friends Medwoods and H & J Transport would not survive in the present economic scene. It is highly competitive out there gentlemen. Not for the faint hearted. I am told that a new rig has one week to make money in one year. The rest of the time you are paying either the bank, the driver, your fuel bill or whatever - or even one of those fines John Schnell's men hand out from time to time.

But there I go again being a cynic. It is nice for us old codgers to sit back and reflect on what it was like back in the "dark ages" when Medwoods, W & J Bulk and Old Man Bolton with Cargo Carriers were still around. All were characters in the transport business which I looked at in awe but the transport business has changed and is changing rapidly with the new technology which is around. Us "old codgers" are all dying off and we will be making way for the "young bucks" with their lap-tops instead of their snap-on spanners.

At the end of the day the transport industry will still survive even if our friend Maria Ramos gets her way and undercuts the transport companies. But on this point, there is no need to worry Gentlemen. The goods which they will surely lose or have stolen will drive industry back to transport in a very short time. Somebody once said that there are two types of mad people in this world: half of them would want to be Napoleon and the other half want to run the railways. Good luck to you Ramos! I hope you achieve it but I won't hold my breath.

JOHN WARLAND
Transport Manager 
FFS Refiners (Pty) Ltd

Editor's Comment: 'Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end'... Remember that song. It's still around but those days are not. Oh well! BUT HEY!!!! Enough already of that 'old codgers' talk there John. It's the 'old codgers' who are still running the show as not enough 'young bucks' are coming into the industry to replace them. So put the 'old codger' label into your bottom drawer until much later. You have a role to play for a long time to come. Look at Jack Webster. Now going on 88, his mind is still as sharp and active as it ever was. Sure, this grand man of the industry has slowed down his walk a bit, but I would hesitate to advise anyone to take him on in an argument. His mind is razor sharp and he can still use it like a swash-buckle. But I must agree with you. They were lekker days weren't they? You've mentioned Old Man Bolton. Wherever I think of him I cannot help thinking of guys like Phil Erasmus, Merrick Goddard, Tony Serrano and, of course, Mr Maintenance himself Bill Factor. And here's a name many of our 'old codger' readers will recall from those days: Glenda Kemp. Remember her and her python performing in hidden transport warehouses in Wadeville. Eeeeish! Thanks for taking the time and trouble to write to us - and we look forward to hearing from you for many years to come as you continue contributing to this wonderful industry of ours.

Your comment

I was surprised to read a letter in FleetWatch (May 2006, Question & Answer) from Geoff and Norma Gogle who now appear to be resident in British Columbia, Canada, in respect of the importation of used left-hand-drive trucks into South Africa.

Come on, Geoff, you know the situation very well, assuming that this is this same Geoff and Norma Gogle who tried the same tricks from Zambia many years ago with the debacle of Western Star trucks. The subject of LHD and used vehicles was taken up by NAAMSA and that is how and why we have legislation today to prevent such imports.

May I respectfully suggest that you confine your activities to Canada rather than try and make a 'quick buck' on this side. You could consider the importation of used right-hand-drive South African trucks into Canada. After all, Canada only switched to LHD vehicles in 1939.

Dai Davies O.B.E.
(Formerly at E.R.F.)

Editor's Comment: Ouch and Eeeissh!

Your comment