Fixing potholes will reduce accidents, but so will not driving your fancy SUVs like F1 cars

The crash this week of an official BMW SUV carrying KwaZulu-Natal Transport MEC Peggy Nkonyeni should be the spur to consider a number of road safety issues.

Initial reports suggested the MEC’s vehicle had burst a tyre. Eye-witnesses suggested, however, that bad potholes were the cause. That sounds more likely: Either the car hit a pothole and burst a tyre, causing it to overturn, or it rolled when trying to avoid a pothole.

However, given the extensive damage caused by the rollover, this was not a low-speed crash. A properly trained driver, when negotiating bad potholes, would have reduced speed. This would give you more time for reaction – to avoid a pothole altogether or, in the event of having a burst tyre, being able to control the vehicle.

Government’s important people seem to believe that speed emphasises you are a VIP. That is what happened to a minister, Collins Chabane, some years back, when he and his bodyguards were killed when their speeding SUV hit a truck making an illegal U-turn on the highway in Limpopo.

However, the main thing to consider from the latest crash is that SUVs – which is the biggest growing market sector in South Africa – do not handle like normal hatchbacks or sedans. Given that many will have a dual on-/off-road capability, they will probably be equipped with multi-terrain or even off-road tyres.

The tread compounds and tread block design on these tyresmean they will not allow for braking as well as tyres intended solely for high-speed sedans.

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Braking distances will be increased and stability under braking will be decreased. Those are facts. That is what the laws of physics do to any travelling object. But perhaps the major law of physics which cannot be ignored when driving SUVs – even the fancy, performance-orientated ones – is that they are higher than their sedan equivalents.

Higher means a higher centre of gravity… and a higher tendency to roll over under the same emergency inputs as a sedan equivalent. That’s not something the salesperson is going to tell you. And it is unlikely the owner’s handbook of the SUV will warn you.

So, if you’re in an SUV, don’t put your foot down as much. You’ll never win a tussle against the laws of physics.