‘Death stretch’s’ terrible toll
THE notorious “death stretch” on the N1 highway between Laingsburg and Beaufort West has claimed nearly 80 lives in two years.
This month five people were arrested for driving at an average speed of 175km/h.
The latest speedster to appear in court was a 55-yearold who was caught clocking 171km/h in a 120km/h zone.
The arrest follows that of a driver doing 178km/h last month.
Provincial traffic department senior manager for traffic training and development, Farrel Payne, said the highest speed recorded was 191km/h, in January.
The 200km stretch of road’s reputation dates back more than a decade, with hundreds of people having died along it in numerous crashes.
Last month five people, including a baby, were killed in a head-on collision along the road, when a car crashed into a passenger bus.
Payne said that between January 2014 and December last year, 79 people were killed in crashes along the road.
“Even though traffic law enforcement plays a pivotal role in addressing driver behaviour at any given time, road safety must at all times be seen as a collective partnership between our public and our enforcement agency,” Payne said.
In 2013 the province installed Average Speed Over Distance (Asod) cameras, which calculates the average speed of a vehicle from the time it passes the first camera until it passes the second. Reaching point B in a time shorter than that determined by the distance and speed limit means that the driver was speeding.
Payne said the implementation had contributed significantly to reducing the number of excessive speedsters, fatalities and accidents.
“While we do still experience a decrease in fatalities on this stretch of road, we have experienced a general decrease in the amount of speed offenders.
“I will remain optimistic that the Asod technology will continue to bare fruit in regulating the speed profiles, thus further reducing our current fatality rate, which is our objective,” Payne said.
• In 2015, four people, including a 5-year-old boy, died on the stretch.
• In 2010 four men from the same Cape Town family were killed in a head-on collision between a car and a minibus on the highway between Laingsburg and Beaufort West.
In 2002 the provincial transport committee called for an examination of the design of the road after 12 people in a bakkie died in an crash outside Leeu-Gamka.
Road Traffic Management Corporation spokesperson Simon Zwane said the corporation worked with provincial departments as well municipalities to identify hazardous locations and ensure that the necessary measures were put in place to curb fatalities.
“We are confident that the Western Cape authorities are capable of addressing road crashes on this road, and that the RTMC will be able to assist when called upon to do so by our provincial partner,” Zwane said.