You’ve got to hand it to South Africans , when disaster strikes, everyone climbs in to help clean up the mess. Take this truck which lost part of its load of cool-drinks in Pretoria.
A good friend of FleetWatch and long time road safety campaigner, Dr Lawrence Baritt, stopped at a robot and was so touched by what he saw in terms of fellow South Africans helping a less fortunate truck driver that he reached for his camera to record just how kind South Africans are to each other.
We’re not sure how the crates of cool-drink fell off the truck but they were lying scattered all over the road and pavement. Seeing the danger this might pose to other road users, pedestrians came running in from all sides to help the truck driver prevent a secondary accident by removing the crates from the road.
It was really kind , and quite brave of them – to help considering they had to risk running across the road in the face of advancing traffic but they did so willingly as you can see by the smiles on their faces.
We’re not sure where they left the crates and bottles after they were out of the traffic danger zone but we’re sure they must have laid them gently down on the opposite pavement and then waited around to help the driver and his assistants load them up again.
Someone in our office mentioned on seeing the photographs that it looked like they were enjoying a free shopping day and were, in fact, stealing the cool-drinks. Noooo! Can’t be. Not in South Africa! All I can say to those who harbour such thoughts is: Oh ye of little faith.
Don’t you just love trucking in South Africa!
