Two buses collided at the 166 Km peg today between Zimbabwe’s capital city Harare and the southeastern town of Rusape, resulting in the death of forty seven people along the Harare-Mutare highway.

ACCIDENT: 50 DEAD-Two buses collided at the 166 Km peg today between Zimbabwe’s capital city Harare and the southeastern town of Rusape, resulting in the death of forty seven people along the Harare-Mutare highway. Zimbabwe’s roads are generally in bad state and full of dangerous drivers including unlicenced, drink drivers, non road worth vehicles and general disregard for human life by drivers.

It is also standard pocedure for road deaths to spike torwards or during major holidays such as new year, heroes and now as we approach the festive season we can already see unfolding road horrors. The dead include , 48 adults and two children in the head on collision between a Smart Express and a Bolt Cutter bus near Rusape tollgate this evening. By the look of the photo, this is most likely driver error as the road on both sides has enough level room from the extra tarred portion and even level untarred surface on both sides. This is clearly an avoidable accident.

www.newzimbabwevision has some advice for key people on road safety. It is critical for the government to enforce driving regulations such as road worthiness of tyres and vehicle condition, passenger capacity and luggage capacity, speed limits, driving hours and implement corporate liability responsibility, where company owners and managers are held accountable for accidents, hauled before the court and charged for such horrors. This will force the busines owners to ensure they enforce the safety amongst their staff as they equally face being jailed or the business being deregistered .

Compensation penalty by the state and towards accident victims must be paid and time tables followed to stop speeding. Safety must be a priority through out. We need to tighten regulations and enforce the road safety laws and implement stiffer penalties for any breaches. We would rather have less buses, slower buses but safer travel for everyone with no favours in order to restore sanity on the roads.It cannot be right for people to die in such numbers like chickens on slaughter.

There are so many reasons why this may have happened, it could have been a sleeping driver, loss of steering or lack of lane discipline, a pothole and loss of control, inattention , avoiding a parked vehicle, cyclist, pedestrian, wild animal or driver collapse or any of hundreds of reasons even suicidal mentality or drink driving a common bus driver state, and also seeing the exact point of impact based on the scattered wreckage. The only way of telling what happened is from witnesses such as other oncoming and following drivers, pedestrians, surving passengers, witness statements from survinng passengers about the obvious health statem tiredness of their driversm driving habits along the way, vehicle condition, VID vehicle road worthiness condition reports, last repairs relating to vehicle control and perfomance.More news to follow. By Sibusiso Ngwenya

UPDATE: -THE Smart Express bus driver ( Cosmas Marembo) who initially fled the scene of accident after the Rusape accident that claimed 50 lives on Wednesday evening has now handed himself over to the Zimbabwe Republic Police Rusape traffic section Smart Express Bus Company owner, Mrs Arima Mkwamba conceded that her company had of late witnessed several accidents largely blamed on the recklessness of her drivers.

According to a Herald report, the Smart Express Bus Company owner, Mrs Arima Mkwamba conceded that her company had of late witnessed several accidents largely blamed on the recklessness of her drivers.“We are very disappointed by the wanton loss of lives being caused by the accidents. Our drivers are reckless and we have on many occasions warned them against such driving,” she said. Sibusiso Ngwenya.
photo-herald-Smart Express and a Bolt Cutter bus head on collision near Rusape tollgate this evening.

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