South Africans are dreading a week of traffic headaches as Monday starts off at Stage six loadshedding and eight to nine hours without power. It has been down (or up) graded to level five but this is still six hours, minimum, without power. These outages play major havoc on traffic with the incidents of crashes at intersections without traffic lights becoming a common sight.
The CEO of MasterDrive, Eugene Herbert, says the key to managing the added stress the outages add to daily trips is to remain calm. “As frustrating as it may be, accept that loadshedding is a reality. Get into your car prepared for the challenges this creates and then manage them calmly and safely. When you let frustration rule your decisions behind the wheel, it becomes dangerous.”
Herbert provides the following tips to safely navigate the roads during loadshedding:
- Be prepared by knowing when outages will affect your commute to and from work. Keep an eye on loadshedding schedules and attempt to avoid areas experiencing outages during your travel times with the help of apps like Google Maps.
- Give yourself additional travel time to avoid feeling pressurised while driving.
- Do not drive in the yellow lane while waiting in congestion at a traffic light. It worsens the traffic for other motorists, makes it more dangerous to re-enter traffic later and may incite anger from fellow drivers.
- While intersections should be treated as four-way stops, often this does not happen making it necessary that you double check every path that crosses yours before going. Rather take longer to cross than not make it across at all.
- If you find it difficult to remain calm in congestion, find ways that can assist in keeping you relaxed such as selecting relaxing music before leaving.
- Listen to points people directing traffic and give them the respect they deserve for the help they provide.
- If another driver is displaying reckless, selfish or any other questionable behaviour, rather ignore them and move out of their way than get upset or try to intervene.
Days where people face up to 10 hours without power is placing extra pressure on drivers. “Do not drive in a way that you may later regret. Accept that these challenges are likely to affect you and make a mental commitment to handle them safely,” says Herbert.
