Recently there has been some serious construction going on on South African roads, I live in Durban and the biggest construction site at the moment is the N2/Umgeni Road interchange, and in the past week I've seen the most horrific accidents in my life.
You see I travel to work everyday past this construction site and I get to see these accidents happening every day, whether big or small, it's still an accident. Now the question we have to ask is, are the drivers at fault or the construction company itself? Before the construction there weren't as many accidents, but after they started there has been one almost every day.
If you look at the N2/Umgeni interchange construction there has been some sort of precaution taken but it is not enough. Slow down signs just don't cut it, the N2 peak hour traffic is not just traffic, think of it as a 100 car cargo train, it is approaching the site with momentum and force and mere signs are not going to stop it. There needs to be another physical force exerted on it to counter act it's momentum and slow it down.
Speed breakers is the answer to this problem, you know those thin bumps in sets of five or six, where your whole car vibrates when you go over them? If the construction companies implement this a couple kilometers before the construction site at regular intervals, it will slow down the traffic enough to react better to the construction site up ahead.
It has been almost a year now that the construction in this area has been going on and too many lives have been lost. Better planning needs to be done when it comes to construction in high traffic areas. And hopefully it will also encourage drivers to use alternate routes.
