Wrong turn ends in tragic death on the B2

Eileen van der Schyff

A Zambian truck driver died instantly on Tuesday night when a passing vehicle struck him as he was busy on the roadside to prepare his truck to pull another truck out of the mud. The truck got stuck in muddy sand as it pulled off the B2 some 20km from Karibib on the way to Okahandja.

As the driver was busy attaching his truck’s pulling mechanism to the truck that got stuck, a passing Range Rover hit him.
The trucks were under-way to Zambia. At Karibib, the driver of the one truck instead of turning off onto the C33 leading to Omaruru proceeded on the B2 to-wards Okahandja.
Some 20km later he realised he was on the wrong route and pulled over with the intention to make a U-turn and return to Karibib. The truck got stuck next to the road, but with the mechanical horse still partly on the road.
The other driver who was underway to Omaruru also turned around to go and look for his colleague, as he was not seeing him in the rear view mirror.
The driver located his colleague whose truck got stuck and he started preparing to try and pull the truck free from the mud. It was in this process that the passing Range Rover collided with the mechanical horse stuck partly on the road and also killing the driver who was working very close to the road-side.
The driver of the Range Rover, a Chinese national, was unharmed, but his passenger (also a Chinese national) suffered a broken leg.
The two were trans-ported by ambulance to the Okahandja state hospital.
Usakos state hospital could not be reached as heavy rains earlier that evening made it inaccessible for short period of time.
The body of the deceased was transported to the Omaruru state hospital’s mortuary. At the time of going to press the next of kin of the deceased was yet to be informed.