Family of five escapes unhurt after truck sandwich [video]

Accidents involving trucks on South Africa’s highways has become a topic of much debate after a series of serious pile-ups involving heavy commercial vehicles this year.

Watch video of the accident below

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Following the most recent smash on the M41 in Durban, involving 35 cars triggered by an out-of-control truck, calls have been mounting for authorities to take greater action in light of the country’s rail infrastructure continuing to falter.

The involvement of trucks has, however, been defended by logistics and fleet vehicle management organisation, Webfleet, who last year claimed that 33% of accidents were caused by other vehicles and not just trucks.

ALSO READ: New transport survey: Trucks not the default cause of accidents

“With recent news coverage seeming to place the blame on truck drivers, the reality is that other motorists, who may not be held to certain sector specific driving, training and safety standards, contribute to the rising number of road incidents,” Webfleet Sales Director, Justin Manson, said following the release of the organisation’s road safety report.

“Unfortunately, this and other external factors, like road conditions and weather, are out of transport operators’ control. They do, however, have the ability to substantially bring down risk in the areas they do have control over.”

Lucky to escape without serious injury

Truck-related smashes are, of course, not limited to South Africa and in the latest video to emerge online, this time from Malaysia, five occupants of a Perodua Aruz, a rebadged version of what South Africans knew as the Toyota Rush, were lucky to escape serious injury after being rear-ended by a truck on the country’s North-South Highway this past Tuesday (14 March).

Based on the forward facing dashcam footage obtained by website, paultan.org, the initial 26 seconds sees the Aruz crawling in heavy traffic, before being severely shunted by the unseen truck into two others on the left and in the front.

According to a report by Malaysia’s mstar.com, two of the five passengers were children, aged three and four, who can be heard crying after the Aruz had come to a stop.

“Our trip was okay, not too crowed. Suddenly, the traffic slowed down before [we] got hit by a [tractor] trailer. Even when we stopped spinning, we couldn’t believe what [had] happened. Everything was sudden,” a translated version of the driver’s explanation to the publication read.

Subsequent images of the wrecked Aruz revealed that the side airbags had deployed, which no doubt helped save the passengers from injury. The entire right-hand side didn’t come off so lightly though, with the same applying to the mangled front and rear.

In Malaysia, the Aruz, which sells from the directly converted Rand equivalent of just under R300 000, comes with six airbags as standard and in 2018, obtained a five-star ASEAN NCAP rating.

Fatality rate

No details as to what happened with the truck driver was released. According to a report by nst.com in January this year, an average of 18 people a day are killed in road accident across Malaysia with a prior finding by Asia Insurance Review in 2019 naming it as the Asian country with third highest death roll related to accidents after Thailand and Vietnam.

Compiled by Charl Bosch