Train and truck collide
Emergency services had to use the jaws of life to extract a passenger from a vehicle, after a collision in Wes Street, last Thursday 18 December around 16:30.

Residents flocked to the Observer’s Facebook page where they demanded that the municipality erect a speed hump, to curtail speeding motorists on the busy route with two slipways to Mhluzi.
The collision occurred at the spot in Wes Street where motorists turn into the Pick ‘n Pay parking lot.
Three vehicles were involved. According to eyewitnesses, all involved, except a passenger in one of the vehicles, alighted from their cars after the collision, without serious injuries.
The woman, who had to be cut from the wreck, was transported to hospital with possible neck and shoulder injuries.
• On Friday, a bakkie overturned into a ditch on the Bethal road, close to the mall.
The driver lost control of the bakkie, which left the road and tipped over into the ditch.
No one was seriously injured in the event.
• A tragedy was averted by the breadth of a hair on Saturday, when a truck and cargo train collided on the train crossing in Nelson Mandela Drive. The train was entering Columbus with a cargo of stainless coils when it struck the crossing truck on the mudguard.
Neither the truck nor the train sustained any serious damage, though Columbus personnel on the scene commented that people often take dangerous chances on the crossing without realizing how fast the train is moving.
Shortly after the police concluded their scene report, both truck and train went on their separate ways. The locomotive belongs to MFC, thus Columbus declined to comment.
• One person died this week Monday in a collision on the N4. By the time of print, police failed to disclose what had transpired, though eyewitnesses said that a petrol tanker bumped the Mercedes of the deceased from behind.
The Observer cannot release the identity of the deceased who, is yet to be identified formally by the next of kin.