Another season of death

The annual festive season carnage on South Africa’s roads continued in December 2011 despite all-out official efforts to bring down the accident statistics. By the end of the month  the death toll already stood at 1,232 and was still rising in January as thousands of holidaymakers were heading home. Road deaths in South Africa occur at double the global rate. Conventional campaigns fail year after year and a rethink in approach seems to be needed.

Authorities have singled out a number of causes, the biggest culprits being speeding, drunken driving, driver fatigue and unroadworthy vehicles. The common denominator in by far the majority of accidents is lawlessness, it is claimed.

Launching a safety awareness campaign in KwaZulu-Natal in December, President Jacob Zuma said some 14,000 people lose their lives on South African roads each year at a cost to the economy a staggering R56bn.

President Zuma urged citizens to respect traffic laws, to wear their seatbelts at all times, and to rest when driving long distances. He said the government would intensify its campaign to improve road safety and would continue implementing the three-year National Rolling Enforcement Plan to improve visible law enforcement. First launched in October 2010 the plan includes checking a million drivers and vehicles per month.

The South African Medical Research Council says more than 60% of fatal crashes are caused by alcohol abuse, both by drivers and pedestrians and President Zuma said traffic law enforcement personnel were directed to focus on arresting drunken drivers, speedsters, and reckless and negligent drivers.

Not enough

The high death toll over the latest festive season shows that even this was not enough. Future road safety education and awareness campaigns will focus on young people to  change the culture of recklessness and lawlessness on the roads.

The government also aims to reduce road deaths by up to 30% through a campaign aimed at increasing the use of seatbelts by drivers and passengers by 80%.

“We will also continue to focus on primary schools and have developed multi-media road safety education materials to improve the effectiveness of road safety education programmes in schools.

“We also encourage our law enforcement officers to make the road safety intervention strategy a 365-days-a-year  commitment,” said President Zuma.

The Western Cape introduced a campaign to remove unroadworthy vehicles from the roads, at the start of the holidays, as well as one to encourage drivers to rest frequently when driving long distances. Driver fatigue had once again proved to be a major killer in this province.

Traffic authorities said they would continue taking unroadworthy vehicles off the road at a checkpoint at Beaufort West. In just one morning at the beginning of January, they  impounded 40 unroadworthy vehicles there.

And 182 taxis travelling between Cape Town and the Eastern Cape were stopped and checked, with 28 taxis being stopped to allow their tired drivers to rest before continuing with their journeys.

Between December 26 and 31 alone a total of 179,131 vehicles were stopped and checked for roadworthiness and other issues. This led to the arrest of 373 traffic offenders, 193 drunken drivers and 40 speedsters across all provinces.

According to the Department of Transport’s Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) an average of 39 people were killed every day on South Africa’s roads between 1 and 31 December in 1,027 accidents.

Some results

The concerted countrywide efforts to bring down the accident rate seem to have borne some positive fruits.

RTMC spokesperson Ashref Ismail said reports received from traffic monitors around the country suggested there was better road safety compliance from most motorists than in previous years. And the death toll of 1,232 for December was also lower than the toll of 1,365 killed in December 2010. Last year the death toll for the entire festive season stood at 1,551.

However, major culprits again included taxis and buses and in the Western Cape traffic authorities recorded an increase in fatal taxi accidents in December 2011 compared to the previous year. Taxi-related accidents killed 134 people during the month, an increase from around 10% of total deaths to about 20%. The overall death toll for December also increased in the Western Cape.

This year a major controversy developed when Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele proposed that the licences of drivers  arrested for various offences should be seized by traffic officers and the licences suspended or cancelled. However, it seems such action would be illegal and only the courts are empowered to do this.

Nonetheless, the minister did reveal that more than 78,000 driving licences had been cancelled or suspended across the country during the past five years. In 2011 alone some 11,500 licences were cancelled or suspended, with the majority being in Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. These provinces also annually account for most of the fatal accidents during the annual festive season.

The Justice Project SA and a number of legal experts held that it would be illegal for traffic officials to seize  licences and that this was not prescribed in any legislation.

However, the RTMC argued that the National Road Traffic Act allows them to do so, while Minister Ndebele’s office held that the National Road Traffic Act allowed both the courts and provincial transport MECs to suspend or cancel licences. Which leaves the question whether it would be legal for traffic officers to seize these licences, or whether that would amount to theft, as is argued by the Justice Project SA.

Meanwhile Minister Ndebele also announced that between December 1 and 28 more than 1,434 motorists were arrested across the country. These included 501 for drunk driving, 93 for excessive speed, 37 for reckless and/or negligent driving, 104 for overloading, 420 for not being in possession of valid public transport permits, 16 for not being in possession of a valid driving licence, 22 for false documents and 241 for other offences.

During the same period, 544,379 vehicles and drivers were checked, 117,061 fines were issued for various traffic offences and 3,956 unroadworthy vehicles, with the majority being buses and taxis, were removed from the roads.

Ndebele urged all South Africans to support the global campaign Friend of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 aimed at bring down road deaths around the world by pledging to:

• Never drink and drive;
• Test themselves and their vehicles before a journey;
• Not tolerate speeding;
• Wear seatbelts and ensure all passengers are buckled up;
• Not tolerate overloading;
• Encourage rest stops every two hours;
• Eliminate use of cell phones while driving;
• Promote pedestrian safety;
• Obey all rules of the road; and to.
• Report traffic offences to the 0861 400 800 hotline.

It has also been estimated that road accidents will be the number one killer of children aged 5 to 14 by the year 2015, outstripping both malaria and HIV/Aids.

Comparisons with other countries are not that simple, as conditions and contributing factors differ vastly. Nonetheless, Zambia for example, a country about half the size of South Africa with a population of about 13-million, a quarter of that of South Africa, has recorded only 58 road deaths over the festive season so far.

While the South African death rate may be some 21 times higher, Zambia has far fewer people, far fewer cars, and far fewer roads. It also lacks South Africa’s coastal holiday resorts to which many holidaymakers stream every year.

In neighbouring Zimbabwe – with similar conditions to Zambia but possibly with a greater flow of traffic to South African and Mozambican cities and resorts – the December death toll was 82 in 899 accidents.

In Australia and New Zealand 120 and 20 people respectively  die in road accidents each month, compared to almost 1,200 in South Africa. Road conditions may be better in those countries, there are fewer people and cars, law enforcement is stricter, motorists have a law-abiding culture, and cars are generally in a better roadworthy condition.

Even so, South Africa has a long way to go to bring down this carnage more significantly.