By: News day

South Africa’s failure to shift freight from road to rail has resulted in a dangerous overreliance on trucks, leading to severe road congestion, infrastructure damage, and a high rate of fatal accidents, according to the United National Transport Union (UNTU). The union has accused the Department of Transport of ignoring the crisis, pointing to recent tragedies such as a multi-vehicle collision on the N10 in the Eastern Cape that claimed five lives on 1 December.

Data from a 2023 Road Traffic Management Corporation report reveals that over a five-year period, there were 2,237 fatal truck crashes involving more than 3,000 trucks—equating to at least one fatal truck accident every day. UNTU contends that Transport Minister Barbara Creecy’s new Arrive Alive safety campaign overlooks this central issue, focusing instead on individual driver responsibility.

The union also emphasized that road damage is overwhelmingly caused by trucks, with passenger vehicles accounting for only about 1% of wear. The government has set a target to move 250 million tonnes of freight to rail by 2030 but has made little tangible progress. UNTU attributes this to insufficient protection of rail infrastructure, which faces persistent sabotage, cable theft, and vandalism by criminal syndicates.

As freight has increasingly shifted from rail to road over the past five years, South Africa’s truck fleet has expanded while its locomotive count has dropped by a third. KwaZulu-Natal, particularly the N3 corridor between Johannesburg and Durban, records the highest number of fatal truck accidents. South Africa was recently ranked the world’s most dangerous country to drive in, with 24.5 road traffic deaths per 100,000 people.