Drive nice, it’s contagious

Eugene Herbert from MasterDrive.

Last week alone saw two taxi crashes in which more than 10 people were injured in each crash. While the official cause of the crashes is unknown, many drivers may automatically assume it was the taxi driver’s fault. Could it also be possible that many South Africans do not treat taxis with the same courtesy that they treat other drivers? If you find yourself agreeing with this, you may want to rethink this approach.

‘Drive nice, it’s contagious’ is a motto by which Eugene Herbert, from MasterDrive, lives. He strongly believes if everyone interacted with taxi drivers in a positive manner instead of treating them as a threat, there would be less crashes. “Our challenge in interacting with taxi drivers is to teach them how to interact with other drivers whose values and norms are different to theirs. When you make a mistake and need to get back in, who is the first one to let you back in? It’s probably the taxi driver because he knows what it is like.”

The tendency to ill-treat fellow drivers as we do in South Africa is also not an attitude echoed in other countries. “In Europe, when entering an onramp, the traffic makes way for you. In South Africa we attempt to cut drivers out and close the gaps. If we did some very simple and basic things we would not have the cost of lives we currently see.”

Herbert believes that by becoming courteous drivers, South Africa has the opportunity to not only reduce road tragedy but benefit society as a whole. “The shocking part is road crashes and fatalities cost the fiscus about R300 billion a year. If some of that was ploughed back into education or health services, think of the difference we could make to half the issues today.”

If you would like to find out more about becoming a courteous drier, give MasterDrive a call on 011 867 4778. They are dedicated to changing driver behaviour and consequently reducing the death toll on our roads.