Renewed plea after R72 crash

Careering truck hits parked car

There have been renewed calls for action to make the R72 coastal road safer. This follows the most recent incident on the busy road, east of the Nico Malan Bridge.

A parked car was flipped upside-down and partly crushed by a truck travelling from East London to Gqeberha via Port Alfred that lost control on the hill before the bridge.

“If it had been five minutes later, I would have been in it.”

Port Alfred resident Sherrie Bradfield was calm when she told Talk of the Town about what could have been a fatal accident.

But that was only because she’d taken medication to manage the distress of seeing “all I own” flipped over like a tin can and crushed before her eyes early on Monday November 20.

The queues of vehicles from the Nico Malan Bridge westwards, and diverted through the East Bank streets from the East London side persisted for most of the morning.

Ndlambe’s Traffic Department was on site at intersections to divert traffic through the CBD.

At about 10.30am, a full deployment of heavy-duty towing vehicles hooked separately onto the horse and trailer and cargo, and began to shift them off the busy main road.

“I set my alarm for 6.30am,” said Bradfield, who works in the CBD.

“There was going to be loadshedding at 7am and the door of the garage I’ve been using doesn’t have a backup battery so I had to take my car out before then.

“Where I’d had my car parked before, it was broken into three weeks ago. So I was really grateful when one of my neighbours said I could use that garage.”

After leaving her Citroen C3 parked on the driveway, Bradfield went back inside for a cup of coffee ahead of a quick trip to the beach before work.

“Then we heard this really loud noise and we reckoned it was a broken truck coming down the hill. We couldn’t really see anything though.”

Bradfield and her son ran back inside to get the gate key, when they heard a loud crash.

What they saw when they returned was a terrible shock.

“Right now, I’m numb,” Bradfield said, speaking a few hours after the incident.

“To see the only thing I own upside-down and crushed. The worst is it’s not insured,” she said. “I’m a single mom with three kids and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

The truck belongs to a private operator subcontracted by Milltrans, who referred Talk of the Town to the owner for comment. TOTT had been unable to reach him at the number given by the time of publishing.

However, a source near the scene said they believed a broken prop shaft had caused the truck to lose control.

There have been many calls on social media during the past week for Sanral, which manages the R72, to install speed humps. A reader has written (see page 6): “If Sanral cannot keep the trucks out of our coastal town … then we request speed humps.”

Three people died – two at the scene and one later in hospital – at a crash outside Rosehill Mall shopping centre on Tuesday November 14. On Sunday November 12, a truck overturned on the bottom corner of Southwell Road (the town section of the R72).

TOTT approached Sanral and Ndlambe Municipality for clarity on their respective areas of responsibility, and regarding the call to divert trucks and/or for speed humps.

TOTT had not received a response from either at the time of writing.

Does Bradfield have a guardian angel?

“Many!” she told Talk of the Town. “Many!”