No - poor driving, unresponsible driving, lax driving - kills. Speed is a factor, yes, but it's not the primary reason people die on the roads.
It's obvious that the 2 trucks were again racing down the Highway at incredible speed, and the BMW and MX5(or Jaguar) were involved as innocent law-abiding road-users, coming off worse for wear !
Man, and i thought my fear of driving near or around trucks especially on high ways was irrational :O
I saw the BMW, and basically summarised what happened from there.
I've said it before ("someone" bit my head off because of what I said) and I will keep repeating myself.
Speed doesn't kill, irresponsibility does.
When people say that speed kills I just can't help but to feel that they blame the speed rather than the driver. Think about this for a sec before anyone attacks me again, if the driver of that truck was responsible, he wouldn't be driving that fast would he? I bet you that he was driving fast, trucks like that are only allowed to do 60 km/h on narrow tar roads and 80 km/h on wide. Look at the pics, he wasn't going 80.
You really should read the editor of the motoring segment in the Benoni city time’s columns. We share the same view but you'll most probably listen to him because he's like, editor and stuff.
Btw, accidents like these happen when drivers drive trucks as if they were cars.
Last edited by Toi; 30-08-2007 at 08:29 AM. Reason: Forgot an F
I drive to university everyday along the R21/N1. I've seen how terrible and recklessly people can drive. But the worst is that the truck drivers also do but they're obviously too ignorant, thick (i don't know!) to realise the vehicles they're controlling are mammoths in comparison and can do damage, like in this case, because of it...
The worse are the truck drivers tired of driving in the slow lane and then while hundreds of cars are zooming past it in the mid lane it decides to change lanes.
This happened one time to me he changed into the mid lane, I put the brakes on and sharply turned into the left lane. As I accelerated I blew my horn, the truck driver hearing this shook his steering wheel as if he was trying to hit me, luckely I saw it and turned to the emergency lane.
The problem as we all know is that SA suffers from a lack of railways, thus the need for more trucks, do the do anything about this....
The problem is......truck drivers feel empowered by the vehicle that they drive. Only to find out that metal is metal is metal is metal (learned that trick from Azi, big up!!!!) and it bends when you hit something.
Yeah and when metal hits felsh (or bends over flesh whateva)...splat!!!
Road rage is a big no-no too, and that's talking to you and not the truck driver. You don't need to show your dissatisfaction.
Did you know that you move along 4 times as far by breaking from * to 0 on the same tire tread if you double your speed. I.e. if you drive 60 and then 120km/h you will drive 4 times the distance after hitting the breaks. Besides that, speeding is reckless and there is a reason why there are speed boundaries, there is no such thing as responsible speeding.