Cape Town - Three years after a minibus taxi driver dodged the booms and collided with a train, killing 10 children, drivers continue recklessly to disregard the warning lights at the Buttskop railway crossing in Blackheath.
But now they are being caught on camera.
Newly installed CCTV cameras have captured the life-threatening behaviour of drivers who sneak through the crossing, often missing a train by seconds.
In August 2010, taxi driver Jacob Humphreys, who was taking 14 children to school, overtook a line of stationary cars, ignored warning signals and dodged the boom before the taxi was crushed by an oncoming train. Ten children died and four were injured.
Valerie Phillips, whose 13-year-old son, Jody, was among the dead, drives over the crossing every day as she takes her younger son to school. She watches motorists speed past the memorial crosses with the same cocky opportunism that cost her son his life.
“It just proves that somebody else’s life means nothing to them,” she says.
Last month, on the third anniversary of Jody’s death, Valerie and her husband decorated the roadside memorial with bright fake flowers.
Some drivers stopped to help clean up the site and to offer their prayers and sympathy. But some, Phillips recalled, sped past without a care for the law – or the lives lost there.
“While we were cleaning, even though the booms were down, they just crossed,” she says.
She will not allow her younger son to take a taxi to his school in Bellville. She and her husband always drive him early in the morning, when the traffic isn’t too heavy, and she picks him up after work.
The trip forces her to drive past Jody’s school, where he would have been in Grade 11.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think of my son, especially now with exams and school holidays and Christmas time,” she said. “You try to cope with the pain, but it’s really difficult. I just lock myself in. I don’t want to be around people.”
On the days when she has to stop at the level crossing and watch the train go by, a lot goes through her mind.
“If we can just start to respect one another, just to obey the rules, it would make it easier for everybody.”
There have been 80 near-misses at Buttskop in the past 10 months. “Any one of those could have been fatal,” said Metrorail regional manager Mthuthuzeli Swartz. “The recklessness and irresponsible acts seen at these level crossings not only endanger lives, but cause very costly damage to property.”
CCTV footage from the installed cameras shows trucks ploughing through the booms, leaving them strewn across the track just in time for the oncoming train. Damage to booms has cost Metrorail R400 000 this year alone.
Still more footage shows smaller vehicles zig-zagging across as the booms descend, with no regard for warning signals or the approaching train.
Transport MEC Robin Carlisle hopes to make level crossing transgressions an impoundable offence.
“As we pick it up over the cameras, officers will go to the registered address with the fine that applies and impound the vehicle,” he said. The fine is R500.
Swartz said the new cameras would help trains run on time by preventing accidents on the track.
“Every accident means the trains will be delayed for up to two hours. Every accident costs time and lives. The economy can grind to a halt, schoolchildren can be late for their exams. It’s of great significance that we’re doing these initiatives.”
The first CCTV camera was installed at the White Road level crossing in Retreat. Since June last year, 4 210 fines have been issued for failure to stop at the crossing.
Yesterday, Swartz brought cars to a halt and personally reminded drivers of their obligation to stop at the crossing. “People are using the stop sign as a yield sign,” he said.
Carlisle caught one motorcyclist edging forward across the stop line. He forced the biker to backpedal to the appropriate distance and pause before zooming off across the tracks.
The area surrounding the crossing appeared to be a potential road rage hot spot, as drivers from side roads struggled to muscle their way into the main road’s traffic flow.
“The frustration of being caught up in congestion is what can make people do stupid things at the level crossing,” Carlisle said. “Traffic flow must be reorganised around here.”
A business owner in the Buttskop area, who did not wish to be named, said: “It’s the wild west out here.
“The boom comes down when the train’s at Blackheath station, about 100m away. They’ll be at the front at the stop street, take a good look to make sure the train is stationary, and they’ll go – because the boom only ever covers half the road.
“And then every one to two weeks, the boom is broken off altogether, so there’s nothing stopping them at all. It takes about a week to fix and people use it as a four-way stop, with the boom lying crumpled on the ground.
“In the afternoons there’s a train from Cape Town to Somerset West at roughly 4.55pm, and another one in the opposite direction at 5pm. That’s precisely when people are on their way home, and when they get the most impatient.”
When the Cape Argus was at the crossing, a bakkie driver shouted in Afrikaans: “When are you going to build a bridge here?” Bridges are part of Carlisle’s long-term plan to eliminate level crossings – but that solution is a long way off. – Additional reporting by Murray Williams
Cape Argus