We don't want the next one
to be you!

It has never been FleetWatch's way to publish photographs of close-up gory details of road accidents. The reason is because we are extremely sensitive to the feelings of the family members left behind. The knowledge that a loved one died a horrible death in a violent accident brings enough sorrow into a family. We would not want to add to that sorrow by depicting the full horror of that violence. What our policy has always been is to use accidents as incidents where lessons can be learnt hopefully so that others can avoid making the same mistakes. It is thus that every February we publish the number of accidents, the number of deaths but, more importantly, the probably cause of the accidents over the previous festive season. Putting forward 'lessons from the carnage' is how we have always thought we could play a role in improving the situation out on the roads. We've been wrong. It hasn't helped a bit. Nothing has changed. The body count just keeps going up and up to the point where I believe South Africans have become hardened to the statistics. The lessons have not been heeded. Certainly the politicians have taken no notice. As Gary Ronald says in a letter to FleetWatch, (see page 73): "More and more people are dying on South African roads every day and frankly there is no end in sight. 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." It is thus I am breaking our policy of some 11 years and publishing the pictures you see here. They are repeated in the story on page 73. The family members left behind have seen these scenes. They were there. I want you to see them. 

In the top one, this Mazda hit a truck head-on at the top of Van Reenen's pass. A mother - three months pregnant - and her husband were killed instantly and the young daughter was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. The elder child was travelling ahead in another car with her grandparents. When they realised the car was no longer behind them, they turned back - and this is what they saw. A young girl was left without a mother, father or little sister. The bottom pic shows a car being loaded onto a wrecker. It too was involved in a head-on collision - with a car not a truck - which resulted in the deaths of some six or seven people whose bodies were lying all over the road. I was there. So too were the sons of a mother and father who were killed - and another father, also killed. The parents were returning by car to Durban from a weekend in Johannesburg where they had watched their sons play in a rugby festival. The sons were travelling back in a bus with the rest of their team members. The bus arrived on the scene and the sons saw the bodies of their parents lying on that cold stretch of road. A happy weekend ended in absolute tragedy.

I now want all readers to do something I have never asked before in FleetWatch. I want you to take a close look in the area around the back wheel of the crunched Mazda. Use a magnifying glass if necessary. Do you see that little doll's head? That was the child's doll. Do you see below that the little teddy bear? That was the child's teddy bear. Do you see below that the chunk of meat? That was the child's dad. This is the BLOODY HORROR we keep telling everyone - including our politicians - about. This is what emergency personnel deal with every day out on our roads. This is what causes our emergency personnel to seek trauma counselling. This is what our politicians never see close-up and this is what we want our President to see in the hope that it will spur him into taking a leadership role in dealing with the on-going carnage and tragedy on our roads.

I apologise to the families of those who were killed. I apologise to all our readers - including my own staff and family - for taking you into the close-up, horrible details of this tragic accident. It has never been our way but it is time to show the reality - the horror - of accidents. The reality takes you way beyond an impersonal body count and it is this that leads Ronald to state: "A scorecard doesn't reflect the feelings or the loss and anger felt when you watch someone die because they are beyond human help." There were 269 fatalities over the past Easter period. We don't want the next one to be you. Please turn to page 73 and let's take it further. 

Patrick O'Leary
Managing Editor