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Garwin Beukes - For the last seven months I have been driving for 100km and more on a bi weekly basis. One topic that seems to be avoided is the constant undertaking on our roads.
While the offender might deem it, “not that dangerous”, undertaking has been the cause of many accidents in Namibia. So what are we referring to here? Don't we mean overtaking? Undertaking is the term referred to when a vehicle is passed on the left-hand side, usually named the shoulder of the road, marked by a yellow-lane.
Windhoek city police spokesperson, Edmund Khoaseb, announced weeks ago that the city police was to target offenders who are driving in the yellow line to allow faster traffic to overtake. This was in connection with their 80km/h maximum speed awareness.
We noticed that, especially on wider roads, when motorists refuse to drive in the yellow line to make way for faster traffic, ‘undertaking’ happens.
When you undertake on the portion of the road on the left hand side of the road, the chance of crashing your vehicle increases. The driver undertaking does not know how long the portion of road is still safe to drive on and the driver being undertaken could at any time swing towards that side of the road.
The biggest issue is that driver being undertaken is also put in a compromising position, having to dodge motorists very close on both sides.
We urge you to not make use of this illegal practise - taking even up to 10 minutes extra to get to your location, isn't worth the risk of losing your life.
