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The wreck of the taxi in which four people died Monday morn-ing.

Sadly, we told you people will be killed

 

The horror crash which left four people dead and 13 injured at the N1/Witvlag-intersection on Monday morning once again sparked debate about the correct placement of the arrestor bed at the bottom of the Soutpansberg mountain pass near the entrance to Louis Trichardt.

The crash occurred at the exact same spot where, a year ago (almost to the day), an out-of-control Great North Transport bus crashed into the construction site at the T-junction while workers were busy building a new "slipway" from the N1 onto the Witvlag road. Although nobody was killed, the accident did spark concern from residents like Messrs Kallie Röttcher and Eric Maynier that the "slipway" is not the answer and would, in the long run, contribute to road fatalities at the junction.

Monday’s crash, when a runaway truck crashed head-on into an approaching taxi travelling on the Witvlag road en route to Louis Trichardt, left Röttcher and Maynier livid with anger and a feeling of "We told you so!"

"Tomorrow, it might be one of us who is killed. We told them that an arrestor bed at the junction would be better suited to stop run-away trucks. We warned them that runaway trucks would use the ‘slipway’ in an effort to avoid crashing further down the mountain. This is exactly what happened!" Röttcher said.

In response to Röttcher and Maynier’s argument last year in March, that the T-junction would be made more dangerous due to the slipway and that an arrestor bed there would be more appropriate, South African National Road Agency regional manager Mr Ismail Essa said that the principle of arrestor beds is to construct them at a point where a  heavy vehicle gets into trouble in terms of braking or related mechanical failure. He said that, in the case of the Soutpansberg Mountain pass, this has been found to be in the last third of a descent.

"So the arrestor bed has been placed where it is for reasons of international design practice, as well as the geometry of the road at that point and the availability of suitable land to construct it on," Mr Essa said. As for the current upgrading of the junction and arguments that it is being made more unsafe, Mr Essa said last year: "The upgrading of the Witvlag/N1-intersection is part of the normal upgrading of that section of the N1. We have, under this current contract, stabilised the slopes (both fill and cut) within the pass and added a crawler lane to the southbound lane as you exit the mountain pass that continues until the first intersection at Makhado. This was done in order to improve the road safety aspects of the road for heavy vehicles."

A year later, Mr Essa’s comment means little to Röttcher and Maynier, as well as the families who lost loved ones.

"Why does somebody always have to die before people start listening," Röttcher said.

News - Date: 14 March 2008

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Andries van Zyl

Andries joined the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror in April 1993 as a darkroom assistant. Within a couple of months he moved over to the production side of the newspaper and eventually doubled as a reporter. In 1995 he left the newspaper group and travelled overseas for a couple of months. In 1996, Andries rejoined the Zoutpansberger as a reporter. In August 2002, he was appointed as News Editor of the Zoutpansberger, a position he holds until today.

Email: [email protected]

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