Claudia Holgate of Northside writes:
I read the article “Raid comes to a grinding halt” (week ending 8 November) with some interest.
I witnessed the accident and was in fact two cars behind the lady who hit the so-called official vehicle.
If I had been five seconds earlier it would have been me. The official vehicle was a City Parks bakkie, not any emergency vehicle with flashing lights or sirens to make any other vehicles aware of its intentions. It was not obviously part of any convoy.
They were going in a southerly direction (away from Ruimsig) in the turning only lane to turn into Nic Diedericks Drive, as if they were going to Lifestyle Crossing. Without any warning, they pulled in front of oncoming traffic as if they were doing a U-turn in the middle of the road.
The traffic light was green in favour of the lady accused of going through the convoy. Let me reiterate, there was no obvious convoy, there were no emergency vehicles with lights or sirens stopping traffic in the intersection at the time of the accident. A police vehicle arrived about 30 seconds later.
The lady in the other vehicle was not going fast and she slammed on brakes and swerved to try and miss the City Parks vehicle that turned in front of her unexpectedly.
I am a paramedic and know that if we need to stop vehicles at an intersection to allow an ambulance through against the robot, we need to have an emergency vehicle with lights and sirens to stop the traffic. It is also the law that any emergency vehicle needs to wait for permission from road users to let them through, one cannot assume that road users will stop.
I feel your article does a great injustice to the poor lady who tried to avoid the City Parks vehicle. It is unfortunate that your reporters didn’t get the story from the lady driving the other vehicle, who, in no way, did anything wrong.
– Letter shortened
Editor’s comment:
Thank you for taking the time to send us your email. Any and all feedback is always appreciated.
I cannot personally comment on the incident as I was not there however the report on the incident was done by one of our journalists who was part of the convoy and saw the accident happen. She obviously witnessed it from a different angle and perhaps having driven around in the convoy for a while was more aware that there was an actual convoy.
It is unfortunate that we were unable to get comment from the lady driving the other vehicle. The two journalists in attendance did attempt to but she refused to talk to the media as is her right. As a result we could only report on the information that we had.
In hindsight both journalists commented that although there was a police vehicle stopping traffic at all the previous intersections the convoy had driven through, there wasn’t one at the intersection where the accident occurred. A clear indication of how important it is for all intersections to be properly blocked off for any convoy.
