Coal Trucks are the absolute worst thing to date. The roads are being torn up and worse, there are so many really, bad accidents now. These trucks are not even aware of hitting a small vehicle and yet the speed they do through a busy area is terrifying.
We were late for an event and therefore were driving at the highest speed allowable on a country road when up ahead we saw a coal truck going quite slow as it was a long up hill. Once over that hill we could not catch up with him and that has proven to be the reason for two of these trucks causing huge accidents this past weekend. Two overturned and I saw what looked like the remains of a small sedan but didn’t look properly as I really don’t want to know.
What came to mind when driving back from the Drakensburg to Eswatini was the joy I found at the sight of a train. Remember the days of trying to count the trucks as they went by. I am sure, although it was so long ago that I saw a long train of coal trucks on rail, that I might be wrong, but I am sure they were in the hundreds of units. That was in the old days when coal had almost been banned but just imagine how many trucks there would be now per train. Of course, now these hundreds and hundreds of trucks are on our roads, threatening our lives and making travelling a misery.
Not a problem to the owners of those trucks as there are more and more bright shiny ones entering the fray. I see no way passed this misery as most of all the railway tracks are now missing, so to build a whole new railway system would be a mammoth task costing more money than is now available.
It is so bad that I saw a video taken by helicopter wherein they flew for twenty minutes before the video gave up but not the kilometre after kilometre of bumper-to-bumper trucks which just never seemed to give up. In some places, they are doubled up and even passing the doubled up. We found ourselves on the Crocodile River Road once, in-between this type of situation, and for our safety we had to take an alternative route.
Well, that situation has spread to Eswatini because the hours spent queueing at the Crocodile River Bridge to Maputo has caused a lot of coal companies to choose the longer but probably quicker route through Eswatini. So sad as there were very good roads and visitors used to comment on the condition of them. Now a different story as they deteriorate daily and especially in the commercial area of Matsapha.
Some would say it is the price of progress, but I think progress might go along the road of safety and environmental aesthetics.
| Trucks | and | more | trucks |
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