Last night I left Randburg at about 8pm and when I came up the hill on the N1 North after the Bowling Road bridge, there was an accident scene ahead and a backup of cars in either direction. Strange, I thought. Firstly, the new display boards tells us that NO INCIDENTS N1 N BETWEEN BUCCL AND ALLANDALE in friendly yellow on black. Thanks for that one, I thought, news we can use while we’re stuck on INCIDENT N1 N BETWEEN RIVONIA RD AND BUCCL. Secondly, we passed an accident scene on Saturday night on the same stretch of road which kept us waiting for half and hour, and I wondered what the odds were. In fact, they’re not so bad…
As I’m on my bike, I could squeeze through, just as the traffic starts to flow. On the opposide side, I see this scene:
Whooaa, I thought, there’s no way someone will get out of this one alive, and my mind jumps to an audiobook I recently bought where a guy, Don Piper, told how he was crushed to death in a similar accident but was prayed back to life (90 minutes in Heaven)
. What I surprise I got this morning when I heard the following story on radio! 702 Eyewitness News reports:
A Johannesburg man has described his miraculous escape from a 25 car pile up on the N1 in Sandton.
Absolom Morifi crashed into a truck on the highway between Rivonia Road and the Buccleuch Interchange late yesterday afternoon.
The truck driver lost control of his vehicle after his brakes failed, causing him to swerve across all four lanes.
Emergency personnel were amazed to hear Morifi talking as they tried to reach him in his wrecked car, wedged under the truck.
As he was removed, unscathed from the wreckage, he dusted himself off and praised God.
Morifi says he went to church on Sunday and felt bad about not paying his tithe and so yesterday morning cancelled his life insurance so that he could cede his monthly installment to the church.
He says as he saw the truck heading towards his car, he called out Jesus’ name and prayed.
The Buccleuch Interchange was badly backed up for several hours and two other people were slightly injured. [702.co.za]
Big up, Absolom, that you weren’t found hanging from the proverbial tree, and please write your story so that we can keep it for the future!
In fact, I thought of compiling a book of crashes of the N1, which is notorious for its fatalities (1 person dead per km per year, I think)… “N1: 1 life/km/yr” would be a fairly unlame title. But I won’t, not until there’s more good news like this…