Online Reporter
It keeps happening. On Thursday, 25 people were killed when an Urban Connect bus collided head-on with a large truck along Beitbridge-Masvingo Road and on Saturday another three people died when a Mandaza Bus collided head-on with a Glen View 2 High School bus along the Harare-Masvingo Highway just 10km after Beatrice.
A head-on collision on a major highway means one of the vehicles was in the opposing lane, probably overtaking.
That was what happened in the Beitbridge accident, according to witnesses, and the driver of one of the first cars to arrive at the scene to offer help said he had been overtaken by the bus a few minutes earlier.
In the Saturday accident involving two buses, one was obviously overtaking another vehicle although early reports did not pinpoint which one was in the wrong lane.
The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development has been highly active in trying to prevent accidents involving public service vehicles. These measures include have speed limiters and real-time speed monitoring by both bus owners and the police, to ensure all buses obey the legal speed limits on each type of road.
At the same time the Ministry suspended licensed services by companies it thought were to blame for accidents until they had taken approved measures to reduce risk. This is based on the quite sensible proposition that an employer can give safety orders to drivers, and at the same time an employer can take zero action, or just slap a wrist, if a driver breaks the laws.
In the timetables that accompany route licences, the Ministry works out the time a bus properly driven at a reasonable speed, that will obviously average below the limit, will take between each stopping point on the licence. If a bus arrives early, it has obviously been speeding.
It now looks as if the measures already taken, while necessary, are still inadequate to force all bus drivers to drive safely. And these latest two accidents make it clear that something must be done to stop unsafe overtaking.
A bus is a large, heavy vehicle, which means that acceleration and deceleration take more time than would be the case of a modest car with a large engine.
This means that bus drivers, and truck drivers, need a really clear view of the road ahead before they can overtake as they cannot just nip in an out of the traffic.
It is an interesting point that drivers of heavy trucks seem to be involved in fewer accidents than bus drivers, yet there are far more heavy trucks on the roads than buses.
In theory, a bus driver is better trained than a truck driver since you have to have a truck driver’s licence before you can take the road test for a bus driver’s licence.
When we compare the operations of large trucks and buses we find that owners of trucking companies stress the need to deliver the goods, with speed not being an issue.
Like bus owners they will have tracking devices, so they can take action if a driver decides to divert from the laid-down route, but generally the stress on truck drivers is to deliver, and if they are a couple of hours late then reasonable explanations are accepted. No one is ever pressing a truck driver to “go faster”.
That, regrettably, is not the case with buses. Sometimes the pressure comes from the bus owner; sometimes passengers urge a driver on to make the journey shorter.
Sometimes even drivers have indulged in silly speeding games with other drivers.
So one solution is to upgrade the bus drivers licence and the tests needed to earn one.
Tests tend to be in urban areas, yet it is on the open road at speed when the fatal accidents tend to happen.
The urban test will cover many important areas, such as the ability to manoeuvre properly and obey road signs, but will not cover how good the driver is at high speed along the highways.
Some countries invest a great deal more into training of bus drivers, which among other things makes such drivers better remunerated since they have to be better. They also have tight rules for bus drivers, such as zero alcohol blood alcohol so bus drivers can only drink on the first of their two consecutive days offs each week.
Most importantly even fairly minor failures to drive according to law means a bus driver’s licence can be suspended with retesting to follow, where a car driver might just have a modest fine for the same offence.
The other factor we need to look at is to make buses safer and give passengers a better chance of survival should the worst happen when there is an accident. We can start with seat belts.
While the driver and all passengers in a car are now required to be wearing a seat belt, and these have been fitted as standard for many years now, belts are unusual in buses and even when fitted they are often not worn.
From initial reports it appears that many of those who died in the Beitbridge crash had severe head injuries, especially those who died on the way to hospital. It should be worthwhile to see if these injuries were likely to have been far less severe if the passenger had been belted in.
Unlike urban services, where standing passengers are permitted and kombis, who are now banned from rural trips, who can pack four passengers in a row of seats, intercity buses operate under different rules with every passenger required to be in a proper seat. So having a seat belt and enforcing use does not seem to be anything very difficult.
We must keep up the improvements that have already been implemented by the Transport Ministry in recent years, and keep adding to what is needed to make public transport exceptionally safe.
