Holiday road carnage continues despite best efforts by government {writer: Stef Terblanche }

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

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 every year. The cost to the economy, he added, was a staggering R56 billion.

The cost to municipalities is enormous, as municipal law enforcement and emergency staff, vehicles and equipment are used to deal with the scourge alongside their provincial and national counterparts.

President Zuma urged citizens to respect traffic laws, to wear their seat belt 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. The latter includes checking a million drivers and vehicles per month. The plan was first launched in October 2010.

With the South African Medical Research Council saying that more than 60% of fatal crashes are caused by alcohol abuse, both by drivers and pedestrians, the president said traffic law enforcement personnel were directed to focus on arresting drunken drivers as well as speedsters, and reckless and negligent drivers.

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

The government further hopes to reduce road deaths by up to 30% through a campaign that aims to increase the number of drivers and passengers wearing a seat belt by 80%.

“We will also continue to focus on primary schools and have developed multimedia road safety education materials to improve the effectiveness of road safety education programmes in schools,” said President Zuma. “We also encourage our law enforcement officers to make the road safety intervention strategy a 365-days-a-year commitment.”

In the Western Cape, a campaign to remove unroadworthy vehicles from the roads had been introduced 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, particularly on the notorious stretch of the N1 between Cape Town and Beaufort West.

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

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

In Limpopo, traffic officials conducted random searches and roadworthiness checks, among other measures, to try and bring down the accident rate. A large number of taxis were inspected.

Various measures were introduced in all other provinces.

Between 26 and 31 December 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.

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.

But even despite the high death toll – with the final number expected to be considerably higher still – the concerted countrywide efforts to bring down the accident rate seem to have borne positive fruit.

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 lower than the toll of 1 365 people 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 had also increased in the Western Cape.

This year, Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele caused a major controversy when he proposed that the driver’s licence of traffic offenders 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 seem empowered to do this.

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

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

The RTMC argued, however, that the National Road Traffic Act allows it to do so, while Minister Ndebele’s office held that the 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.

In the interim, the minister announced that between 1 and 28 December, 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 having 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 “Friends of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020”, aimed at decreasing road deaths around the world by pledging to:

• Not drink and drive;

• Test themselves and their vehicles before a journey;

• Not tolerate speeding;

• Wear seat belts and ensure all passengers are buckled up;

• Not tolerate overloading;

• Encourage rest stops every two hours;

• Eliminate use of cellphones while driving;

• Promote pedestrian safety;

• Obey all rules of the road; and

• Report traffic offences to the 0861 400 800 hotline.

Road accident deaths in South Africa occur at double the global rate.

It has further 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, which is about a quarter of that of South Africa – has recorded only 58 road deaths over the festive season thus far.

While the South African death rate may be some 21 times higher, Zambia has far less people, far less cars and far fewer roads.

Furthermore, it 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 respectively, 120 and 20 people die in road accidents each month, compared to almost 1 200 in South Africa.

Road conditions may be better in those countries; there are less people and cars, law enforcement is more strict and consistent, 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 decrease this carnage more significantly.