Checks show up school-bus shocker
2011-06-24 08:57
DEADLY STATISTICS: In a recent blitz, less than 10% of vehicles transporting scholars were found to be roadworthy.
Thousands of schoolchildren, with their parents' blessing, board "the school bus" or a booked and shared taxi twiuce a day - and head off into the traffice in a death trap.
Have YOU ever gone along to check what Johnny and Sipho, Mary and Mfundu, ride in to school with their friends?
Why? Well, how about this: recent police roadblock checks of 132 vehicles carrying schoolchildren between Brakpan and Springs showed only 11 were roadworthy - that's way less than 10%. They were impounded and their licence discs (well, those that had a licence disc, valid or forged) confiscated.
Now how comfortable do you feel about packing Johnny's lunchbox then giving him into the care of a stranger whose driving licence you have never seen, whose vehicle you have never inspected and whose driving experience you have never checked?
ANY DIFFERENCE?
South Africa joined the rest of the world and officially launched the
United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 on in May, 2011. From October 1, 2010 to May 31, 2011 in South Africa, according to national transport minister Sibusiso Ndebele, nearly 10-million vehicles and their drivers have been checked and 4.1-million notices of prosecution issued.
Going by the school-bus check on June 22, it ain't made a bit of difference.
Money-hungry operators caring zip about vehicle maintenance - or children's lives - go about their business five days a week and the currency of their trade, much too often, is death and mutilation. Of children.
As part of the approaching winter school-holiday travel season minster Ndebele has promised a huge show of force with all manner of law-enforcement agencies (national, provincial, metropolitan and municipal) involved in road blocks and patrols and he's made the usual, year-after-year, appeal for "road users to exercise extra caution".
UNROADWORTHY? CRUSH IT!
That's great, Mr Minister, but drivers should be using maximum caution ALL THE TIME. Your slogan is boring, ignored, outdated, ineffective, useless. The promise and prosecuton of huge penalties for bad, dangerous driving and unroadworthy vehicles that threaten the lives not just of their occupants but you and me too must be enforced - and that goes for the background owners of such vehcles - particularly those school buses.
Fine them, jail them, crush - immediately - the murderous machines they use to make maximum profit with minimum maintenance and maximum risk to life.
Those figures from Springs are not merely sobering, they arebloodily terrifying.
Nail their owners, Mr Minister, and nail them good.
