Johannesburg - He woke up early as he always did to transport people to work and school. At 9am, his body lay on the wet tar road, in a body bag.
He died on the scene, but he was not the only one to lose his life. A few hours later, a pregnant passenger died in hospital.
Besides these tragic deaths, scores of passengers were injured when two Metrobuses collided head-on on Jan Smuts Avenue near Zoo Lake on Friday morning.
Passengers from the two buses watched as their fellow commuters were rescued from the wreckage.
Although many of them were injured themselves, they waited for the other passengers to be rescued before they sought medical help.
But the broken glass and pieces of metal scattered on the wet tar made it difficult for the large contingent of rescue services workers on the scene to retrieve the trapped passengers.
City of Joburg spokesman Virgil James confirmed the driver’s death. “There were four people trapped in the bus; the dead driver was among them,” he said.
The commuters trapped in the double-decker included the pregnant woman, who later died.
One of the women travelling to the north of Joburg on the double-decker bus said the accident happened quickly.
Chante Davids said the driver of the single-decker bus was speeding and lost control of the vehicle on the wet road.
She said she normally stood next to the driver when she boarded the bus, allowing the elderly to take the seats.
But on Friday morning, she was tired, so she sat down.
“If I had been standing, I would not have been here today. I thank my lucky stars,” she said.
After the accident, Davids said everything was chaos; the passengers were emotional and in a hurry to get out of the bus, fearing it might explode.
“A woman was almost trampled and people were pushing each other, forcing their way out,” she said.
Another woman travelling on the double-decker bus said she saw the single-decker bus hitting the barricade on the side of the road. The driver of that bus then lost control and collided with them, she said.
Weeping as she spoke, Thato Mokgola described the driver of the double-decker bus as “one of the best”.
She said: “I have been travelling with him more than a year and he was a good man.”
Blood streamed down the face of one of the men rescued from the single-decker bus.
He sat on the side of the road as paramedics attended to him.
Passersby and joggers stopped to help and console the weeping passengers.
Others came with refreshments and also tried to offer their help to the injured.
The accident caused a severe traffic backlog on Jan Smuts Avenue, one of the city’s busiest streets.
Ambulances, forensic service vehicles and police cars added to the congestion.
Officials prevented the masses of curious onlookers from getting too close to the wreckage.
JMPD spokeswoman Superintendent Edna Mamonyane said it was too early to tell which one of the two buses had lost control, smashing head-on into the one travelling in the opposite direction.
“Specialised accident scene people from the SAPS are on their way to analyse the accident,” she said earlier, adding that she could not immediately confirm the number of people injured.
However, she speculated that about 90 people had been affected because both buses were full at the time of the accident.
The Star