Weekend road carnage leaves 10 dead, scores injured

Emergency service personnel from across the country have had their hands full dealing with fatal road accidents at the weekend.

On Saturday evening, a woman was killed when her car overturned and rolled on the N2 near Adams Road in Amanzimtoti.

Netcare911 spokesperson Chris Botha said that the woman had been killed on impact and had sustained “extensive injuries”.

He added that another woman had survived the accident.

Later two people were killed in a head-on collision on Booth Road near the N2 Bridge in Chesterville, Durban.

Rescuecare spokesperson Garrith Jamieson said that a minibus and car had collided, killing the two occupants in the front seat of the car.

“The back two occupants had suffered moderate injuries and were stabilized on the scene before being transported to a nearby hospital for further care that they required. One person from the taxi had sustained minor injuries and was also transported to a nearby hospital,” he said.

Jamieson said medics went on to attend an accident in the Bluff in which a woman was killed and three others were injured.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, paramedics attended an accident in which a bakkie had veered from the N2 at Bazley and plunged down an embankment.

Botha added that a fifteen-year-old girl had died at the scene and that five other children who were in the bakkie had been hurt.

After daybreak, paramedics responded to a crash in Warden in the Free State, which claimed the life of one man.

“Paramedics arrived at the scene and found that the crumpled remains of a bakkie had come to rest in the veld several meters from the roadway after hitting a truck. After medics examined that bakkie driver it was found that he had tragically died due to the extensive injuries that he sustained,” Botha said.

Also in the Free State near Bloemfontein, two people were killed when a bakkie overturned on a gravel road.

Botha said that the bakkie had rolled repeatedly, flinging the occupants on the back into the veld.

On Sunday night, three people were killed and seventeen others were injured when a bakkie and a minibus collided on the N3 near Pietermaritzburg in KZN.

“Paramedics arrived at the scene and found that the taxi had overturned and rolled several times, some of the injured were still trapped in the wreckage. Two men and a woman had died,” Botha said. 

Source: News24