Road safety drive fails to stem carnage

Dipuo Peters has defended the release of road accident statistics but agrees that government is not solving the problems caused by irresponsible road users. Image: GCIS

Government-led road safety and safety awareness campaigns over the past five years have yielded little. But the Department of Transport said while it was true progress had been modest, road deaths were on the decline.

Transport Minister Dipuo Peters published the preliminary festive season road death statistics, which revealed that the causes behind SA's appalling road safety record were well-known and preventable. The major causes were speeding, drunk-driving, reckless overtaking, unroadworthy vehicles, unlicensed drivers and driver fatigue.

Peters said the department would be working with the Department of Basic Education to ensure that road safety becomes part of school curricula. More work would be done with faith-based organisations to create greater awareness of the need to observe traffic regulations.

Peters said her department had also asked the Department of Trade and Industry to include regulations on alcohol retailers and wholesalers that would make the industry responsible for the way alcohol is used.

Acting director-general of transport Mawethu Vilana said the department wanted to name and shame offenders but there were problems with this plan that needed to be resolved with the Department of Justice before this could be implemented.

Peters said SA had only 17,000 enforcement officials and that 10,000 of these were municipal employees, making the force too small to manage SA's growing national vehicle population of about 10.6m cars, as measured in December 2012.

Manpower shortages exacerbate the problems

Almost 1,400 people died over the festive season with more deaths expected this week. Image: ER24

The Justice Project of SA, a road safety and anti-corruption lobby group, agreed with Peters about the lack of manpower dedicated to managing SA's road death crisis.

"Dangerous driving behaviour remains the prevalent killer on SA's roads and yet the enforcement of moving violations remains a poorly (almost non-existent) implemented practice among traffic authorities," the Justice Project said.

"While the contingent of about 18,000 traffic officers countrywide cannot be deemed as nearly enough to police almost 10m motorists, the way in which they are deployed and used needs urgent review. Deploying them to roadblocks where moving violations don't take place and into bushes to take photographs of speeding motorists, is illogical," it said.

Peters said the failure of South African society to embrace road safety messages was the reason preventable road deaths remained stubbornly high. SA needed a similar sense of urgency and awareness about road safety as it had about HIV/AIDS.

Peters brushed off criticism from the Democratic Alliance (DA) that road fatality figures were being released too soon.

DA transport spokesman Ian Ollis said the release of the road death statistics was premature and dishonest since many people would still be travelling as people return from holiday ahead of the reopening of most schools.

Ollis called for a parliamentary investigation into the deaths on SA's roads. The DA, he said, had been able to cut road deaths in the Western Cape through year-round enforcement and the removal of unroadworthy and unlicensed vehicles and drivers.

Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge