- A man standing on a pavement narrowly escaped injury after a taxi collided with a bus and car in Cape Town.
- In CCTV footage, the taxi is seen changing lanes into oncoming traffic and clipping a MyCiTi bus, but the taxi driver does not stop.
- The taxi then hits a car reversing and narrowly misses a man standing on a pavement, and still the driver continues.
Harrowing CCTV footage captured a minibus-taxi changing lanes, skipping a robot, and then clipping a bus, a car and narrowly missing a man waiting on a pavement.
After this sequence of events in Paarden Island, the taxi driver carries on driving.
“He just climbed out of his taxi and walked away,” said Kurt Carelse, branch manager of Instruments South Africa.
“I just thought ‘Oh my word, please tell me no one got knocked over’,” said Carelse.
The incident, during the Monday morning commute, seems to have have started a way down the road when a taxi is captured on CCTV changing lanes to get ahead of traffic.
He said a MyCiTi bus, which had right of way as other vehicles waited for the robot sequence to rotate, went through the intersection.
The taxi, which had moved into oncoming traffic, ignored the red robot and went through the intersection hitting the MyCiTi bus.
The taxi driver kept going.
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Another angle shows queuing traffic and a car reversing out of a parking bay.
The taxi then hits the reversing car, which is sent swiveling around and crashes into another car in the parking bay.
The taxi still keeps going and does not stop.
In the video a man is seen standing on the pavement as the taxi driver veers on to the pavement after hitting the car.
For a moment it appears that the man had been hit by the taxi, but once the accident debris settles, he can be seen walking back from the spot he had quickly moved to.
His name is not immediately available and Carelse thinks he may have been waiting for somebody.
“He had quick reactions on him. He is very lucky,” said Carelse.
The occupants of the vehicle that was struck appeared to not be seriously injured at first glance.
Maxine Bezuidenhout, spokesperson for City’s Traffic Service said the two people in the car were slightly injured.
Felicity Purchase, the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Transport confirmed that that a minibus taxi overtook vehicles waiting for a red robot to change.
“The driver cut into oncoming traffic, and ran through a red light. When the signal changed over to green the bus had right of way to proceed and hit the taxi. According to the report that was sent to the City none of the passengers in the MyCiTi bus were injured,” said Purchase.
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