Truck collides with signage
Traffic on Hendrik Potgieter Road delayed for more than nine hours
STRUBENS VALLEY – Weekend traffic travelling westward on Hendrik Potgieter Road was severely delayed on 9 November when a sand and stone truck struck overhanging signage just before the Christiaan De Wet intersection. The truck’s tipper had malfunctioned.
The incident occurred just after 11am, recalled driver Phineas Satekga. He said he was driving along Hendrik Potgieter Road when he drove past an Engen garage and saw people shouting at him and pointing upward. He couldn’t make sense of it and continued.
They were shouting because they saw the truck’s tipper moving upward and the truck hurtling toward the sign. The truck then collided with the signage, at approximately 80km/h, with the telecilinder boom lodged firmly around the sign.
“I didn’t see the boom malfunction,” said a humble, softspoken Satekga, who was clearly shaken by the ordeal. “I don’t have a rearview mirror.”
Motorists were left seething for hours in the hot sun as Hendrik Potgieter Road was closed from the Jim Fouché to Christiaan De Wet intersections. The road was only reopened ten hours later.
Johannesburg EMS (Emergency Management Services) at the scene first loosened the bolts of the sign’s super structure before dislodging the tipper, after which the tipper had to be towed away and the sign safely removed to the side of the road before it could be reopened.
