FleetWatch Online - 73-Safety-watch

It wasn’t long after the last Easter peak traffic season that FleetWatch received a letter from Gary Ronald. Written in his personal capacity, Ronald had returned to Johannesburg from his usual volunteer stint with Community Medical Services at Van Reenen Pass helping the stranded and dying – motorists and truckers alike. He had done this many times before but this time, dealing with the mutilated bodies of moms, dads and children had affected him. He came back troubled and hurt. Here’s the letter he penned….

To the Editor
In a country which prides itself on its wonderful constitution, protection of civil rights and democratic structures, it must be something of a misnomer when 12 000 or more citizens’ right to life are being infringed upon every year! Tragic.

"When one considers that it is generally accepted road safety practice that the focus should be on education, engineering, enforcement and communication as interventions which, when combined, should have a positive influence on road user behaviour and ultimately reduce the crash rate on our roads, one must conclude that either this is not happening - or we are doing it wrong. Irrespective of how you look at it, more and more people are dying on South African roads every day and frankly there is no end in sight.

"It would seem that to be a road safety practitioner in our country requires a person with a generally pessimistic view of life as any intervention seems doomed for failure before it has even started.

"We have spent well over R250 million (public money, no less) on the Arrive Alive campaign alone over the last five years with extremely little to show for it. Certainly not an investment at all by any means! Sure, some enforcement equipment has been bought but when one considers the attitude the judiciary takes towards road related crime, one cannot in all honesty blame traffic law enforcement for being reluctant to put in an honest days work. Less that 2.5% of all traffic cases are prosecuted. Note: prosecuted – not even successfully prosecuted!

"Road safety initiatives designed to change road user behaviour are simply not effective. Why? Is it because habits formed over the past few years have made it acceptable to drive in the breakdown lane - alla minibus taxi - or drive at speeds where the posted speed limit is seen as a target? Overtaking on barrier lines, jumping red traffic signals or just being a bully by tailgating at 120kph seems the order of the day. Let’s not even get started on overloading, road conditions, scrap posing as street legal transportation and our ubiquitous public transport! Oh, I almost left out the 2010 Soccer World Cup and "VIP" motorcades.

"Both the Easter and Freedom Day long weekends in April turned, what should have been joyous family time, into weekends of helplessness, depression and anger. Anger at the senseless slaughter of people, without discrimination, on our roads. We don’t need a cricket score to count the dead – there are too many already, and a scorecard doesn’t reflect the feelings, or the loss and anger felt when you watch someone die because they are beyond human help. Imagine making the call informing a stranger that their loved one is not coming home – ever!

"So where to from here? Clearly the powers that be don’t seem to give a hoot about the gravity of the problem we are facing. Political will from the highest level just doesn’t seem to be cutting it, lip service be damned. In a perverse kind of way, a curable endemic is literally taking a back seat to one that is incurable…

"Without a doubt, a serious road culture change has to be effected. Private sector involvement must be secured where savings to the bottom line can be shown by the judicious implementation of simple safety regimes. Civic society needs to adopt safety as its main focus in order to protect the very people who subscribe to it. And of course, government must be held accountable for every life lost, disabled and injured on our road network.

"I am sure that all of us road users have at least a core sense of what is legal and appropriate behaviour. Is it too much to ask that we listen to that inner voice when we venture onto our roads?"

If you know Gary Ronald as I do, you will detect an unusualdegree of anger tinged with despair in the tone of his letter – and it is no wonder. This man, who is passionate about saving lives, had experienced a rough ride over the Easter holidays helping, along with his fellow CMS volunteers and other emergency personnel, to free too many lifeless bodies from too many mangled wrecks.

One, involving a head-on collision between a car and a truck near Windy Corner on top of Van Reenen Pass, was particularly horrible with a family – including a baby – killed in an horrendous smash. There were other accidents attended to, all of which saw Ronald and his colleagues walking in the blood of the victims of South Africa’s road madness.

Perhaps that’s what did it; perhaps that’s what finally got to Ronald – walking just one step too many in the blood. Ronald is no stranger to road accidents. In fact, he’s been on accidents scenes for years both as a cop with the KwaZulu-Natal Traffic Inspectorate, now in his position with the Automobile Association of South Africa and also with Community Medical Services as a volunteer. (No, I’ve not blown his personal capacity in which he wrote the above letter.

He’s well known as a spokesman for the AA but the views expressed above are his own and not those of the AA’s).

So what did it for him? "I feel finished. It was a rough time. Too much tragedy. Too much blood. Too many bodies. I reckon I’ve got to take time-out to get my mind back on track. I’m not going to deal with or think of anything to do with road accidents for at least two weeks. I have to forget," he told me.

I understood. As a journalist, I too have been on many accidents scenes and some accidents do get to you more so than others. Ironically, I felt the same as Ronald for I too had witnessed awful tragedy when coming back from the Eastern Cape with my family. It was just outside Warden on the N3 that we got caught in a huge traffic back-up. Obviously an accident ahead.

We slowly inched forward – very slowly and it wasn’t long before the last light faded and darkness set in. I had my wife and kids in the car as well as my son’s mate who had joined us on our short holiday break. As we got closer to the accident scene, we switched on Radio 702 for any news and there he was, Gary Ronald describing the accident as a bad one.

"I’ve just come past it and it’s the worst kind of accident. A head-on with bodies all over the road," I heard him say on the radio. I couldn’t phone him as my cell phone had been stolen by some scumbag at a Sasol garage in Lusikisiki.

I grabbed my camera, told my wife to drive forward when the traffic moved and started walking towards the scene. Ronald was right. It was the worst kind of accident – bodies lying on the road and emergency personnel working to free others from the wrecks. It was a scene of tragedy but there was more to come. Parked on the side of the road alongside the scene was a bus filled with kids. I saw young faces peering out the windows onto the scene below. The bodies were in full sight. I approached a guy next to the bus and asked why they had stopped at such an awful scene – especially given that there were kids on board and this was hardly a scene to which they should be exposed.

"The mother and father of one of the boys, as well as the father of another, are among the dead. We’ve all been on a rugby tour to Gauteng and were on the way back home to Durban. The boys are on the coach," he told me.

"Yes. We were on another route and were called to the scene. Yes, the boys have seen the bodies of their parents. It’s been hard. We’re now going to continue to Durban and take them home," he said quietly.

Home? To what? SHEAT!!! Dammit man, when it this all going to stop? When is someone in Government going to take the bull by the horns, take firm and decisive leadership and implement actions to put a stop to this madness?? When – when - when?

How’s this idiot? This errant driver and his operator boss need to be taken off the roads forever. Driving on the N3 with no tyres on one side of one of the rear axles on a tandem semi is just not on. Such operators are not wanted on our roads or in our industry. Get out – just get out!

Gary Ronald – I know how you feel. I also know how thousands of other emergency personnel feel around the country, many of whom have attended trauma counselling to get them back on track after attending to countless accidents victims. The politicians are sitting pretty. They are not walking in the blood of mothers and fathers and looking at the faces of young men peering from bus windows down on the lifeless bodies of their parents. They are nowhere near all this. That’s why they don’t care about changing anything.

I’m so peeved off – so very peeved off at the senselessness of all this tragedy. It has been going on for so long and nothing is changing. As Ronald states in his letter:
"Irrespective of how you look at it, more and more people are dying on South African roads every day and frankly, there is no end in sight."

In the March edition of FleetWatch, I wrote an editorial comment addressing President Thabo Mbeki on the issue of the road carnage urging for him to take leadership of the situation. Obviously we are not naïve enough to believe that he reads FleetWatch so we sent a copy to his office. We have yet to receive even the courtesy of acknowledgement of receipt of the magazine – let alone that he has taken note of the contents.

In February 2005, the SA Guild of Motoring Journalists wrote to President Mbeki suggesting the appointment of a Minister or Deputy Minister of Road Traffic Safety as a possible route towards achieving improvements. Nothing has come of this either apart from some meetings with the DoT discussing other suggestions for improvement put forward by the Guild. President Mbeki is still out of the arena.

It is obvious to me Mr President that you need to walk in the blood. Perhaps then you will realise the seriousness of the tragedy that is taking place daily on our roads. I’ve heard you’re a tough man. Well, on road safety, I contend you’re soft. Walk in the blood Mr President – walk in the blood!

As for road users – motorists, taxi drivers and truckers – you too all need a big wake-up call, although I would have thought over 12 000 deaths on our roads per year would suffice as that call. Obviously not, judging by the on-going carnage.

On the trucking side, I remain of the opinion that the majority of truckers are trying hard to do things right. There is still much to do but many are trying. However, on the other side of the coin, there are those who should be booted out of this industry and never be allowed to operate any rig on our roads again. Ever!

Take the twit in the accompanying photograph whose rig is driving merrily along the N3 with one set of tyres missing on one of the axles on his tandem semi-trailer. This picture was taken by Gary Ronald when returning to Johannesburg after picking up bodies around the Van Reenen area. Good Grief! It’s no wonder there is a sense of despair in his letter.

My advice to Ronald – and to all those who are tired of the lack of political will to change things on the road safety front - is to convert despair into anger. Let’s get angry. Let’s all get angry. It’s better to be angry and active – than dead and buried.