A taxi loaded with 35 schoolchildren was pulled over by traffic authorities in Cape Town on Friday morning and the driver arrested – the vehicle’s capacity is 13 passengers.
Seven children were squeezed onto the front seat of the Toyota Quantum and a further 28 in the back, some balancing on seats held up by beer crates.
The children, who were from nine schools in the CBD, said six children had already been dropped off by the time the taxi was pulled over on Keizersgracht Street.
The driver of another vehicle, which was also transporting pupils, was arrested for drunk driving.
The children, in the overloaded vehicle, told Community Safety MEC Albert Fritz they had been instructed to lie down in the taxi if traffic officers were spotted.
Fritz and Transport MEC Robin Carlisle were at a joint operation between provincial and city traffic services on Keizersgracht Street, which ties in with the provincial government’s Safely Home campaign.
The incident followed just days after the Cape Argus reported on how pupils have been risking injury running across Keizersgracht, opposite Holy Cross Roman Catholic Primary, before and after school.
Despite two part-time traffic attendants being provided, one on Searle Street and the other to help pupils on Chester Road and Hill Street, many pupils still chose the shorter route across Keizersgracht.
Taxis transporting children often stopped on the opposite side of the road to the school and many would run headlong into the road while cars were approaching.
The pupils crammed into the taxi this morning said their parents paid R380 a month for their transport.
Fritz indicated that the driver was arrested for overloading the vehicle and for driving without a permit.
“This is unacceptable. I don’t want to imagine what would have happened if there was an accident.”
Fritz said he was shocked and angered that drivers were still taking chances just weeks after the accident at a railway crossing in Blackheath in which 10 children were killed. “These kinds of traffic violations are criminal.”
He said further operations involving school transport would follow.
Fritz said schools should play a bigger role in ensuring that children were transported safely.
Carlisle said he had no idea that the situation was this serious. “We can’t have a situation where children risk life and limb to get to school.”
He said the provincial education department would also have to discuss the problem with school governing bodies.
The city’s transport department has now indicated that measures, which could make this stretch of road safer for pupils, could be implemented soon.
Sean Glass, head of transport network development in the city’s transport department, said there had been a request for a pedestrian crossing on Keizersgracht, in the vicinity of Nile Street, the street adjacent to Holy Cross.
“Calming measures in the form of a raised pedestrian crossing and perhaps an additional speed hump, are appropriate to this location and will be implemented as soon as funds are available to do so.” - Cape Argus