Respect for traffic laws will save lives

Car accidents, particularly fatal ones, have once again dominated news headlines of late.

It goes without saying that lives lost and people suffering irreversible injuries are tragic, but when the cause of the accident is a driver making a U-turn on the freeway, one cannot help but dwell on the futility of it all.

Friday’s fatal accident near KwaMbonambi on the N2 is just the most recent in a string of fatal accidents caused by drivers doing U-turns.

Innocent lives are lost, and in this particular case a child’s life was lost, when motorists demonstrate such a blatant disregard for the law.

Also in this particular case, an eye-witness said it was a police officer who carried out the U-turn and perished when his Ford Ranger caught fire and he could not be extricated in time.

Whether on- or off-duty, a law enforcement officer should know better than to flout the law on the roads.

Police officers are never above the law, but should lead by example, themselves following the very law that they are tasked with enforcing.

A second element to this tragic accident is the fact that more than half a dozen trucks were stopped by the same eye-witness, as well as other motorists who stopped to help, but not one of them was carrying a fire extinguisher.

This meant that, during the time it took for emergency services to arrive on scene, motorists could not extinguish the blaze, which ultimately led to the death of the driver of the Ford Ranger.

Is it not a legal requirement for all trucks to be fitted with working fire extinguishers?

If so, this is another contributing factor stemming from a flouting of the law, to the death toll in this accident.

What hope then, did the innocent people involved in this tragedy have?

Motorists need to start respecting the law and realising that their actions could very quickly end the life of an innocent person.

There are consequences and even if people have no confidence in the legal system, the conscience of someone who causes a fatal accident will not let them forget what they were responsible for.