The Sunday News
Lovert Mafukure
Beauty and the beast. Automobiles are one of man’s best inventions thus far. For some it’s just solely a form of transport, for others like us, it’s a love affair, it’s like magic, it’s like you can’t explain it.
When you find that connection with the right car, the car that responds to your right foot’s little whims, the car that tickles your nerve ends and pumps up some adrenalin rush into your veins…it’s on. With all this passion and love for cars comes the adrenalin, the quest for speed records, the mission to please but in it all how safe are we?
While automobiles serve different purposes to different people for different reasons it’s also one of the worst inventions if not tamed properly. Sometimes it’s like a hungry lion, whether you kneel or jump and lay cold flat on the ground it will eat you. What am I saying? A car is a machine and machines are made by men, some black, some white and in this case Asian and they are made to serve man but like everything else things go wrong and people get hurt.
Over the past years, statistics have shown a steady increase in the number of accidents and deaths on our roads. Before we go any further, every driver or pedestrian should keep in mind that accidents and all kinds of road mishaps are avoidable, yes all of them. Now this increase in road carnage, could it be because of the increased number of used vehicle being imported into our country? Could it be because of unlicensed drivers? Or could the cars be defective somehow? Whatever it is, it needs our immediate attention.
Whenever there are road mishaps, drivers always come out guns blazing trying to shift blame from themselves to the next person. While it seems inevitable that accidents will happen it needs collective input from everyone to bring down the number of accidents taking place. Our economy has forced people to live within their means and usually that means taking some shortcuts that may work for a while and be costly in the end.
Firstly we buy used cars from the first world and oftentimes used cars from our Asian friends are a marvel but cars from our European friends not so much and that creates more problems than solutions for us as the end users. Rust is a menace to all cars from Europe unless you buy the high end cars built to last more than a lifetime but these of course cost an arm and a leg maybe a bit of your sanity too.
Rust is like a disease that eats away your insides until one day your body parts start falling off. It plagues all these European cars and like Pharoah one day we will give in or up. suspension components get affected the most by rust. Coil-springs and leaf-springs break because of rust and sometimes maybe because of different operating temperatures because originally these cars are not acclimatized to African weather and terrain and we just happen to have the worst of everything. Having said that, bear in mind when driving your car that perhaps you need to replace these components for new ones because they can cost a life or two when they decide to give up the ghost. Suspension components are like oxygen, when you need them you need them bad.
One mistake most of us make when we import used cars is to treat them as new cars. They are not new cars good looking as they may be they are far from it, very far. As much as they look new, looks can be deceiving. These are cars that have been used and have depreciated to book value and because of that they deserve a major service and parts replacement before you even dream of long distance driving.
As Africans, not to downgrade us or anything but sometimes we do not bother ourselves about using automobiles for their intended purpose, sometimes its circumstances beyond our control because oftentimes we have to make do to make ends meet. It’s the Zimbabwean story as is in most of Africa, it’s never an easy read.
A lot of seven seater minivans have hit our shores and some have been turned into public service vehicles. A lot of them have multiplied the road carnage statistics. As I said earlier, it’s all human error and such accidents can be avoided. When manufacturers make a seve seater minivan, they make it to accommodate seven people and there is no way the same car can be able to handle the weight of 14 or sixteen people…no way.
There is more to it than just the number of people that can fit in a car. An overloaded vehicle becomes too difficult to steer and takes longer to stop and that poses a risk to the passengers and other road users. Structural integrity of an overloaded vehicle on the other hand is always compromised. Suspension components and axles meant to support specified weight eventually give way prematurely and sometimes at a cost of human life or ability. Sometimes it’s wise to take note of all these concerns and be a responsible road user . It will take not one person but every road user to make our roads safer for everyone.
Tyres also play an integral part when it comes to road safety. There are different types of tyres for different applications. Tyres for wet roads, tyres for snow, tyres for very hot environments, high performance tyres but in Zimbabwe most of us only know one type of tyre…the used tyre. Funny as it may sound, with the persistent financial recession that has hit that is all most of us can afford but there are a few things everyone should know about them as they are the only things separating us from the road below.
Thousands have lost lives and tyre bursts count as one of the major causes of accidents in Zimbabwe. Some concerns have been raised over the importation of used tyres into Zimbabwe but we are still to see any action being taken. Common maintenance of a car entails changing a tyre when it’s worn out or has been condemned for one reason or the other.
Buying a good looking used tyre may not always mean buying a good tyre, the reasons why that tyre was removed are unknown to you and it becomes a hazard buying that tyre. It’s also been noted by tyre experts that tyres generally age and degrade overtime even when they are not in use. Even a spare tire that has stayed for a long time without being used can be past its prime and can be unsafe to use. It’s unfortunate that we get a lot of grey imports with good looking bad tyres that have stayed for years in their idle state.
I would love to hear back from you. Feel free to get in touch with me at anytime for any reason. I can be reached at [email protected] or on +263772339938
