Continual reference is made in this issue's special report on accidents and insurance to the role national and local authorities have to play in ensuring the safe passage of South African road users by ensuring our roads are well maintained and in good nick. This message has obviously been lost on the KwaZulu Natal roads authorities if the state of the road down - or up - Oliviershoek Pass is anything to go by. It's shocking and dangerous - and we have the evidence to prove both writes Patrick O'Leary.

The invite to the Road Freight Association conference gave two possible routes to the Champaign Sports Resort in the Drakensberg. The first was along the N3 from where you cut across to the resort. The second, described as the Scenic Route, took you past Sterkfontein Dam and down Oliviershoek Pass to Bergville and then onwards. I decided to play Irish and take the scenic route in the dark.

I'm not a great one for driving at night but it wasn't a long way and anyway, the Scenic Route would surely be a safe route as 'scenic' indicated that tourists would travel this road - so surely the authorities would ensure its pristine condition. I was right about tourists taking it. I was wrong about it being safe and 'pristine' for it wasn't long after passing the Little Switzerland Resort and winding my way down the pass that I hit a monster pothole. Eieeesh! That was a bad one. Will have a look at it on the way back, I thought as I kept a sharp look-out for others - and others there were, aplenty.
 

	I stopped and directed a truck driver to place his tyre in and on the edge of this hellish hole. Above shows how the whole tyre ‘fits’ into the pothole. The photograph right shows how the tyre has to deflect as it impacts with the edge of the pothole. Read detailed comments in the body copy.

Hitting a pothole at legal road speed is not only a bone-jarring experience. It also causes severe damage to the tyre that lands in it and hits against the hard and sharp edge of that hole when it exits. It's called a tyre impact fracture and although the ultimate damage of a blow-out does not always manifest immediately, that damage stays within the body of the tyre and can eventually cause that tyre to burst. Even if it doesn't burst, you can bet your spare tyre that there is permanent damage embedded in the tyre.

Coming back from the conference three days later, I decided to take a closer look and it was just outside of Bergville that I came across the evidence of the ultimate consequence of a tyre impact fracture caused by a pothole. A truck was stranded at the edge of a lonely stretch of road down from the pass. It had driven down the pass at around 10.45 pm the previous night and had experience a front wheel blow-out at about 11.00pm (see photographs). The time I arrived was around 10.00 the next morning. That's 11 hours. I stopped and spoke to the driver Thabo, who said he had indeed hit some of the potholes when driving down the pass. The back-up bakkie had arrived with a spare just before I got there.
 

This truck had been standing idle for 11 hours before a spare arrived from the depot. It experienced a blowout after hitting potholes down the pass the previous evening. Bridgestone’s Marcus Haw reckons the burst truck tyre could definitely be the result of those potholes. This incident provides clear evidence that potholes are not only deadly dangerous but also add cost to the operator’s pocket.

One can't say with certainly whether or not the blow-out had been caused by an impact fracture imparted by those potholes but I'll lay my bets that it was the cause. Let the road authorities take note that not only did those potholes cost the operator a tyre, but also 11 hours of downtime. The incident also put a driver through a night of terror. "I was very scared and could not sleep when cars slowed down. I thought I would be hijacked or killed," Thabo told me. And all this because the roads authorities do not take it upon themselves to do repair work to the roads which are supposedly the arteries and veins of the economy. It's a downright disgrace.

I then left and stopped up the pass to inspect just one area of damaged road. The accompanying photographs show what it looked like. I then stopped a passing truck and directed him into the pothole so as to demonstrate the impact a tyre suffers when it hits such a pothole. I then stopped an elderly gentleman and his wife who were travelling in a bakkie towing a caravan. They were on the way to the Drakensberg for a few days and I asked them to put the wheels of the bakkie and the caravan into the holes - again to show the effects. 
 

	An elderly couple on the way to the ‘Berg’ took time out of their trip to help us show the impact of potholes  on bakkie and caravan tyres. Horrendous isn’t it? And worse, as Marcus Haw says: "Imagine  the ignorant ‘tosser’ who comes barrelling through that in his new executive sedan with low, low profile tyres on oversized rims. He is going home on a flat-deck."

A local, Linda Frolick, from the Little Switzerland Resort Quick Shop, decries the potholes: "We put up a BMW driver the other night who had a blow-out after hitting one."

After all this, I fed the photographs to Marcus Haw, technical manager at Bridgestone for his opinion. He was flabbergasted. Here's what he said:

"This is exactly what needs to be shown to the authorities, the public and to operators. The burst truck tyre could definitely be the result of those holes. Bear in mind also that the condition of truck suspensions are usually not what they should be and the tyre pressures are most often incorrect as well, making things worse for the tyre.

"If you look at the distortion on the truck tyre standing in the hole, part of the real picture starts emerging. Try to imagine what the tyre will look like at speed. At speed, centrifugal force works on the tyre creating a slight tear drop shape to the forward section of the rotating tyre. As the tyre comes into contact with the road, it recoils into its correct footprint. Now as it goes into this stressed situation, it has to deflect as it impacts with the edge of the pothole. It is extremely harsh.

"Have a look at the truck tyre you stopped in the hole (pics on top of page). Look directly behind the part deflected against the hole edge. Notice the crease extending rearwards in the shoulder. That is where all the stress will be concentrated at speed and you can expect that crease to be three times longer and more severe as well. Internally, the belt edge is under serious torture at this time and can initiate a separation. It is also most likely that a split between the body ply cords will start at the same time. This may rip down immediately or can spread over time to fail at a later stage.

"The same effect - but worse - will happen with the bakkie and the caravan. And imagine the ignorant 'tosser' who comes barrelling through that in his new executive sedan with low, low profile tyres on oversized rims. He is going home on a flat deck."
 

Play it again Sam. Patch and re-patch is what seems to be the norm. Here a recently patched pothole is already starting to lift. Eieesh! What methods are being used that are so temporary?

I then emailed the photographs of the part of the road which had lifted to form a sort of middle mannetjie to a roads engineer who prefers to remain anonymous - probably for fear of his company not getting any work from the authorities. This is not a pothole (see photograph below). It's more like the road lifting up to try escape from itself. I asked whether this type of damage was caused by overloaded trucks - which always get the blame for all road damage. Here's what he said:

"This section of the road has failed due to water penetrating into the layers. The road is in a cutting and the seal between the concrete side drain and the premixed has opened up allowing water to penetrate into the layers and with the applied loads, the layer then fails. If you look closely down the road, you will notice grass growing in the concrete V drain which is an indication that the expansion joints have not been sealed for lack off maintenance. Again water will seep into the layers and failure of the road will develop.

"The middle mannetjie is created by the pressure exerted from the wheel loads and the layer finds the least area of resistance. In other words, the concrete drain has a higher resistance than the layers between the tracks of the truck. The bottom line here is that your caption should read: "Lack of maintenance causes road failure". It is possible that initial overloading caused the separation between the premix and the concrete V drain but if proper routine maintenance is applied, failure of this sort can be limited."

	A roads engineer says this damage is caused by a lack of maintenance rather than by overloaded trucks as the authorities will have us all believe. His detailed comments are in the body copy but the main culprit here is water ingress and lack of routine maintenance. Note above how a truck has to steer into the oncoming lane to avoid the potholes. Dangerous for all.

So, are the authorities - in this case the KZN Roads authorities - doing their job in preventing accidents by ensuring well maintained roads? In this case, the answer is a definite NO! Will it all get better? Who knows? The way things are going around here, probably not. 

As Haw says: "Oliviershoek pass is not going to take anyone to any World Cup games and I don't see the roads being properly sorted out in the near future. They've been patching for years now anyway. And there are many roads like it - and far worse - all around the country which are not priorities with 2010 looming. But imagine if we, during or just after the games, throw another busload of tourists into the scenery because of roads like this. We don't have time to fix all the roads but we do have time to get the word out. I hope you're going to publish these."

Sure I am. Here it is.

We need to also save our roads so replace the headline words on this sign at Sterkfontein Dam  with: "To Save South Africa’s Roads from Extinction. Roads play a vital role in the economic functioning of our precious country and must be preserved. Our Actions Today affect Our Children Tomorrow." Too true – for vultures and for roads.