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The continued run of serious fatal road accidents, with yet another nine people killed on Friday when a grossly overloaded Toyota Sienta collided head-on with a Landcruiser on the Harare-Shamva Road, is a matter of growing concern with the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe now wanting to take more practical measures than just appealing for drivers to obey road rules.
As we have noted before, the upgrade in Zimbabwean roads through rebuilding, repairs and adequate maintenance has generally been a boon to drivers, truck owners, bus owners and their passengers.
But the downside has been more speeding and more risk taking at high speed that has led to more accidents and, more importantly, to far more severe accidents than those done at low speed, while the drivers meandered between potholes and slowed down over broken up surfaces.
The energy of a vehicle, which is turned to zero very fast when an accident brings the vehicle to a sudden stop, is proportional to the square of the velocity.
So if you double your speed there is four times as much energy to cope with in a crash, and if you triple it there is nine times as much.
This is why so many urban accidents just provide work for panel beaters, while many accidents on the main highways end with so much death and injury.
Friday’s accident was typical of the sort of damage that can occur. A Toyota Sienta with 13 passengers aboard, which is gross overloading in a vehicle designed for seven passengers and a driver in moderate comfort, hit a cow and swerved into the oncoming traffic where it hit a Toyota Land Cruiser with three passengers. Of the people in the two vehicles, 16 passengers and two drivers, nine were killed and eight had injuries needing hospital attention. The two vehicles must have been seriously wrecked in that sort of collision.
A head on collision has four times as much energy to dissipate than a pair of collisions between the vehicles smashing into a concrete wall separately, which is why defensive driving courses recommend extreme measures to avoid one.
Almost all accidents are caused by driver error according to police reports, and police have to investigate all accidents where there is an injury and in practice have to investigate almost all minor accidents as well because of insurance claims. So they know what causes the accidents.
Vehicle faults can cause an accident, but generally unless there is a sudden brake failure most faults see a vehicle coming to a halt and not moving, rather than spinning out of control.
The Traffic Council is now redoubling efforts, and these are concentrated almost entirely on drivers, making sure drivers know the law, know how to drive well rather than just legally, and are in a competent state to drive. The council has been mobilising 40 operational teams that will be assigned to the highways across the country to deal directly with drivers, and in cooperation with the police, the Vehicle Inspectorate Department and the Road Motor Transportation Department, will be educating and where that fails enforcing minimum driving standards.
This goes far beyond just assigning blame to an accident and fining a driver, or bringing them to court. The urgent need is to not have the accident in the first place, and that requires all drivers to avoid accidents.
The road law and the Highway Code, which contains the legal requirements of driving as well as a lot of very good advice about best practice, between them if followed by all drivers see the accident rate drop to not much above zero.
Countries where education of drivers and enforcement of rules and conduct on the roads is high have far lower rates than Zimbabwe, and there fatalities in proportion to the number of vehicles and travelling done can be as low as 10 percent of Zimbabwe’s rates.
Two factors are most prevalent in causing accidents, speed and impaired facilities. Speeding means accidents are more likely to happen and make recovery from a problem so much harder, as well as causing more severe injuries when an accident does happen.
And then we have drivers who drink and drive and who take drugs, both illegal and legal, that impair their ability but still go and drive.
So the Traffic Safety Council is also building up more operational teams who will be at major terminuses to check out buses before they travel, and among those checks will be to check out the drivers to make sure that they are not under the influence of alcohol and drugs.
We hope that the council teams will have access to breathalysers and equally simple tests for mbanje and other known drugs.
In fact we would like to go further and have breathalysers available at all checkpoints on major highways so that police can make a simple test if they suspect the driver is not quite all there.
Or laws on alcohol and drug use by drivers are in the top rank globally; the problem is that they are not enforced, largely because police do not have the equipment, just as they find it difficult to enforce the other big killer by forcing drivers to obey speed limits.
We also believe that the Traffic Safety Council should be pushing further on penalties. Almost always a driver escapes with a deposit fine at a police station.
We would like to see a lot more sentences of community service, where the errant drivers have to perform this service at mortuaries, hospitals and the depots where wrecked vehicles are brought, so they can see for themselves just what is the cost of bad driving.
Proposals to introduce the points system, where a pile of minor infringements cause the cancellation of a driver’s licence, also would seem to be urgent. In fact anything that makes more drivers drive legally and sensibly should be tried.
The council is correct. We cannot continue seeing ever more accidents, ever more injuries, ever more deaths on our ever-better roads, and so more action to prevent accidents is needed.
Online Reporter