Durban - The latest victim of rock throwing has the sunroof of his brand new Golf 7 GTI to thank for escaping without a scratch.
Farhaad Mohamed, 45, was on the way home from work on Saturday afternoon when a rock was thrown onto his barely two month old vehicle from a bridge above Higginson Highway.
“Had I been even one second slower that boulder would have hit my windscreen and I would have been gone,” he said on Sunday.
Mohamed said he realised what had happened only some time later as he had continued to drive on after hearing a loud bang.
“I felt glass on my head and when I stopped about three kilometres away and got out of the car, I saw that the glass of my sunroof was completely gone. Luckily the slide cover was closed so that stopped the boulder from coming inside the car.”
Last month, Amina Haffajee, 16, and her brother Abdur Raheem, 7, were killed after a boulder thrown from a bridge crashed through the windscreen of the vehicle they were travelling in on the N2 highway near Tongaat on the N2, between Tongaat and Ballito.
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Since then, several more cases have been reported.
Last week police said they arrested two people “spotted leaning over the Queen Nandi Drive-Inanda Road bridge carrying a rock.”
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Acting provincial commissioner, Major General Bheki Langa said police would continue to work to prevent rock-throwing incidents to protect all the motorists.
Expressing her concern at an executive council meeting last week, eThekwini Mayor Zandile Gumede announced that city officials have met with provincial government and other law enforcement agencies to curb the acts of crime involving the throwing of stones and rocks from bridges.
“We have noted that in other cities they have placed nets and billboards on their bridges in order to prevent such incidents as well as suicide attempts. I am confident that in our collective wisdom we will be able to find a solution,” she said.