11 dead in South Africa minibus and truck collision days after similar crash killed 14 children

A col­li­sion in­volv­ing a minibus taxi and a truck killed at least 11 peo­ple in South Africa on Thurs­day, a lo­cal gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial and emer­gency ser­vices said, just over a week af­ter a sim­i­lar road crash left 14 school­child­ren dead.

Thurs­day’s crash hap­pened near the city of Dur­ban in the east­ern KwaZu­lu-Na­tal province. Provin­cial trans­port de­part­ment of­fi­cial Si­bon­iso Du­ma said in a state­ment that 11 peo­ple, in­clud­ing a school­child, died at the scene, al­though that was ac­cord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion.

“Wit­ness­es have al­leged that the truck dri­ver made a U-turn re­sult­ing in a head-on col­li­sion,” Du­ma said.

Gar­rith Jamieson, spokesper­son for the pri­vate para­medic ser­vice ALS Para­medics, said 11 were dead and sev­er­al peo­ple were crit­i­cal­ly in­jured, in­clud­ing the dri­ver of the minibus, who was trapped in the wreck­age.

The fa­tal col­li­sion came days af­ter a dead­ly head-on crash be­tween a minibus taxi be­ing used to trans­port school­child­ren and a truck.

The dri­ver of the minibus in­volved in that crash near Jo­han­nes­burg on Jan. 19 was ar­rest­ed and charged with 14 counts of mur­der af­ter au­thor­i­ties al­leged he was dri­ving reck­less­ly by over­tak­ing a line of ve­hi­cles be­fore crash­ing in­to the truck.

The 22-year-old dri­ver was ini­tial­ly charged with an of­fense com­pa­ra­ble to manslaugh­ter, but the charges were up­grad­ed to mur­der, ac­cord­ing to state pros­e­cu­tors.

On Thurs­day, South Africa Min­is­ter of Trans­port Bar­bara Creecy ex­pressed “se­ri­ous con­cerns” about the con­tin­u­ous rise in traf­fic fa­tal­i­ties caused by crash­es in­volv­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion.

She in­struct­ed the coun­try’s Road Traf­fic Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, which is re­spon­si­ble for or­ga­niz­ing road traf­fic reg­u­la­tion, en­force­ment and strate­gic plan­ning, to col­lab­o­rate with lo­cal au­thor­i­ties to in­ves­ti­gate the cause of the most re­cent col­li­sion.

A pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port is ex­pect­ed with­in 48 hours of the RTMC be­gin­ning its in­quiry, Creecy said.

Minibus taxis are the pre­ferred method of pub­lic trans­port for most South Africans to get to and from work, with es­ti­mates that they are used by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70% of com­muters.

Africa has a wider prob­lem with road safe­ty, and crash­es kill about 300,000 peo­ple an­nu­al­ly, about a quar­ter of the glob­al toll. Africa has the world’s high­est road traf­fic fa­tal­i­ty rate at 26.6 deaths per 100,000 peo­ple, com­pared with a glob­al av­er­age of about 18, ac­cord­ing to the U.N. Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Africa. This is de­spite the con­ti­nent of 1.5 bil­lion peo­ple ac­count­ing for just about 3% of the glob­al ve­hi­cle pop­u­la­tion.