Are bus designs to blame for carnage?

Sifelani Tsiko

Zimbabweans choked with emotion as the country logged another deadly road traffic accident which claimed the lives of 25 people when a Zupco bus heading for Mutoko and a Pioneer bus travelling to Harare side-swiped along the Harare-Nyamapanda highway recently.

Of the 25 dead, 24 died on the spot while the other one died at the hospital.

Fatal road accidents in Zimbabwe continue their shocking and upward surge claiming on average more than 2 000 lives and injuring more than 10 000 people per annum.

Using police and Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe figures, the country has lost 70 000 lives in fatal road accidents while close to 350 000 people having been injured since the country gained its Independence, more than three decades ago.

Road accidents in Zimbabwe have been blamed on human factors such as speeding, drunken driving, indiscipline and impatience by drivers, very low fines for road offences, non-removal of broken down vehicles along roads, total disregard of road regulations, driver fatigue, expired tyres, red-light jumping, driving without licences, as well as stray animals on roads among a range of faults.

Other transport safety experts identified problems that included vehicle defects, too many consecutive driving hours, unhealthy eating and drinking routines, poor sleeping habits and other factors such as dealing with difficult customers and making unanticipated route changes.

But carefully analysing the Zupco bus wreckage on the January 18 fatal road accident, it occurred to me that maybe we have been targeting the wrong factors in dealing with the scourge. Faulty bus designs are at the core of road traffic accidents.

Even though I am not an engineer or design expert, the Zupco wreckage showed that the bus was structurally deficient in many ways compared to the Pioneer bus.

Many will agree with me that responsible authorities dealing with bus design standards have neglected the design of buses.

Bus design errors have gone unnoticed for decades and failure to review design standards over the years have led to numerous fatal road accidents in Zimbabwe.

I feel strongly that the insufficient review process of bus designs and the failure to monitor standards of imported buses, equipment, vehicle spares and other materials is to blame for the accidents and subsequent deaths.

In this particular bus design, steel support frames were insufficiently reinforced to protect passengers.

I had a discussion with a Harare-based engineer over the issue.

He was honest and candid about the Zupco wreckage and blamed the poor design of buses for the high number of accident victims in the country.

“This is a one-on-one debate and I do not want my name in your paper,” he said.

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Are bus designs to blame for carnage?

 

“The weight of the material used to make the body of vehicles determines how safe it is.

“The roof of the bus was ripped off during the accident. The Zupco bus passenger cabin steel frame was not strong enough, it would have been damaged but not completely ripped off.

“If a bus has a proper body, it cannot tear off after an accident. It will be dented but not ripped off. That was a case of bad design. Look at the Pioneer Bus case, it was slightly damaged because the steel support frames were reinforced sufficiently.”

I agreed with him totally. The majority of people who died were in the Zupco bus.

“It is a clear case of bad design when a bus’ roof is blown off in an accident, leaving passengers exposed to harm,” the engineer explained.

“Most buses do not meet either the minimum safety requirements or the international best standards, I’m sorry to say,” he added regretably.

A Chinese expression aptly captures the Zimbabwean dilemma: “You kill the chicken to scare the monkey!”

But the problem is that monkeys are not chickens and here I’m not sure whether our cocktail of non-licensed drivers, overspeeding, unroadworthy vehicles, poor road infrastructure, lack of road signs and road markings as well as a poorly-resourced Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe and police are solely to blame for the deaths on our roads.

In the past, we had buses that had seats with steel frames. These would injure and kill people during accidents.

Now most coaches have bodyworks that use soft fibre materials and less metal in the interior but with a cabin steel frame that can protect passengers in the event of an accident.

Zimbabwe needs vehicles with such specifications.

Our engineers and transport safety experts need to solicit informed data on how many accidents are caused by vehicle design faults.

Some experts say failure to regulate and check bus design standards may lead to the importation of buses that have materials that cannot withstand local conditions which may cause serious stress on certain components of the vehicles.

This may leave passengers at high risk.

The engineer mentioned earlier said that most imported buses were built without roll bars to protect passengers in the event of a crash.

He suggests that the country needs to push the Standards Association of Zimbabwe to implement new regulations on vehicle body building to ensure that vehicle body builders use specified materials to reduce carnage on the roads.

Other transport and safety authority experts say except for small parcels and letters, long distance passenger service vehicles should not carry cargo other than the passengers’ luggage.

They say mounting of roof racks on buses also contributes to accidents while buses built with an underbase luggage space increase their stability.

Heavy loads on top of buses distorts their stability as this raises the centre of gravity, they say.

Zimbabwe has a vehicle population of more than 1,2 million and the figure is rising as more people import second hand vehicles from Japan and other western countries.

According to the 2013 World Health Organisation (WHO) report, more than 1,24 million people are killed and more than 50 million are injured annually in road accidents.

About 3 500 people die every day in traffic-related incidents and 50 million are injured every year on the world’s roads.

Researchers blame the high numbers of fatalities on transport policies that put vehicles, highways and speed before people and road safety.

Most of those who die are in developing countries, with 20 countries accounting for 70 percent of global road deaths.

Mrs Doreen Tirivanhu, a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Zimbabwe said lack of vehicle inspection, speeding, weak law enforcement, drunk driving and poor infrastructure was spiralling road deaths and injuries.

“Lack of capacity in data collection, analysis and interpretation for policy as well as limited road safety research and outdated technology was also contributing to the crisis,” she said last year during a presentation of research findings of the Transport and Environment Science Technology Network (TEST), a grouping of researchers in five African countries.