After 17 hours on the road, driver Duppie du Plessis admitted his judgement may have been poor when he opted to make a U-turn in Grey Street late on Wednesday night. Ten hours, later, he was still waiting for the recovery vehicle to arrive.
After 17 hours on the road, driver Duppie du Plessis admitted his judgement may have been poor when he opted to make a U-turn in Grey Street late on Wednesday night. Ten hours, later, he was still waiting for the recovery vehicle to arrive.
An officer from the Makana Traffic Department who had been there since 11pm was still on the scene on Thursday, 3 November, morning at 7.30am, operating an effective stop-go as he alternated traffic flow through the single-lane gap left by the tanker, which was stuck at 90 degrees to the traffic stream.
He was waiting to be relieved by provincial traffic officials. Grey Street, which becomes Beaufort Street and then Dr Jacob Zuma Drive, is a main route through Grahamstown to or from the N2.
Du Plessis said he was travelling from Pietermaritzburg to Grahamstown, where he was delivering recycled oil for use as fuel to a local industry.
He stopped in town for something to eat and decided to take a shortcut to his destination (rather than using the bypass).
“I decided to do a U-turn, and then this happened,” he said.
He said a local vehicle recovery company had been to take photographs to assess what they would need for the operation and would be arriving soon.
“It was tiredness,” said Du Plessis. “I’ve been driving since 5am. And that’s after weeks on the road.”
He felt drivers were stretched past their limits.
“You know how when your cellphone battery has gone right down and you put it on charge. Then it charges for a bit and because you’re in a hurry you think, ‘Okay that’s enough, let’s go’.
“It’s like that when you’re a driver. You can pull off as late as 11pm − but your boss will still expect you to start again at 5am.
“But this is a human body − not a cellphone.”
Du Plessis said long-distance drivers are meant to work 72 hours only, before getting a 24-hour break. After every shift, they were required to get a minimum nine-hour break.
“But sometimes I can be five or six weeks on the road.
“I’m a married man. I’m so scared I come home one day and my kids call me ‘Uncle’,” said a distraught and exhausted Du Plessis.
