Pretoria - Was a claim submitted against the Road Accident Fund (RAF) by a woman who alleged she was involved in a hit-and-run accident a bogus claim or not?
That was the dilemma the Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg, had to deal with, after Disebo Betty Ntoro turned to court to claim damages from the RAF.
According to the police who took her to hospital after she was injured, Ntoro told them she was assaulted.
However, she said this was not true, as she was involved in a hit-and-run accident.
One of her versions was that the vehicle had hit her on her right arm.
But somehow there were no injuries to her right arm and she mainly suffered injuries to her face.
Acting Judge CSP Oosthuizen-Senekal said it was not for the court to determine how she was injured, but it was definitely not by a vehicle as described by the claimant.
The RAF denied liability and maintained that Ntoro sustained injuries during an assault and that she was not injured due to a pedestrian-motor vehicle collision.
In her claim, Ntoro said she was a pedestrian walking along Vryburg Road in Mafikeng when she was knocked over from behind by an unidentified motor vehicle.
According to her, the driver of the vehicle was driving at a high speed and failed to apply the brakes timeously in order to avoid the collision.
She said that she was forced to undergo medical and hospital treatment at the Mafikeng Provincial Hospital for her injuries.
In court she testified that on the night of the incident she had escorted her sister and her child to the Bophelong Provincial Hospital in Mafikeng. At about 11 that night she left the hospital alone and was on her way to her home in Seweding Village.
After being dropped off in town, she was walking on the left side of the road when a vehicle approached her from behind and hit her on her right arm with its side mirror, she said.
She fell on her face. After hitting the tar road surface, she lifted her head and noticed that the vehicle speeding away was a bakkie, similar to a Mitsubishi.
She then lost consciousness.
She said that she regained consciousness at the clinic and was told by the nurses that the SAPS brought her to the clinic. The nurses further informed her that they were told by police officers that she was assaulted.
She testified that at that stage she was in pain and unable to respond to the nurses. However, she was shaking her head because she wanted to tell them that she was not assaulted but had been hit by a vehicle, she said.
While she was examined by the doctor at the hospital, she was handed a piece of paper and pen on which she wrote that she was not assaulted, but involved in a motor vehicle accident.
She told the SAPS that she was hitching a lift when she saw the car, but that it had instead hit her and sped off.
She later explained to the court that she was hit by the vehicle’s left side mirror on the upper-right arm, after which she fell on her left knee and hands hitting the road surface.
She, however, had no other injuries apart from facial injuries. She also had various other contradicting versions.
The court further noted that Ntoro could not remember what type of vehicle had hit her.
However, when she testified, she said she remembered it was a Mitsubishi bakkie.
Her police statement also differed to her version in court. But she explained that the SAPS must have misunderstood her, as she was in pain and her jaw was fractured.
She also contradicted her statement made to a private investigator on how the collision occurred.
The judge said the plaintiff was not a credible and reliable witness because she failed to provide the court with a coherent version as to what transpired on the night of the collision.
“Most disquieting was that she testified that the motor vehicle collided with her right arm. It is extraordinary that there was no sign of her right arm having been involved in some kind of blunt trauma.
“One would have expected that if her right arm came into contact with a fast-moving object such as a motor vehicle that there would have been visible injuries such as abrasions or even a fracture,” the judge said in turning down the claim.
Pretoria News