Official holiday road deaths released

THE FESTIVE season, spanning from 1 December to 5 January, painted a gloomy picture of the state of road safety, said Minister of Transport, Dipuo Peters last week.

During this period there were 1 118 registered fatal crashes, with 1 368 fatalities. Compared to the same reporting period last year, 1 147 fatal crashes with 1 376 fatalities were registered. This indicated a small reduction of 2.5 per cent for fatal crashes and 0.6 per cent for fatalities.

“Though we half-heartedly acknowledged the decline, we have no cause to celebrate as our people continue to be killed on our roads due to irresponsible and murderous acts of fellow road users. These senseless killings could have been avoided if we all behaved as responsible law abiding citizens,” Peters said.

Road deaths by numbers

Peters said what was very disturbing was the revelation of the contributory trends to the road carnages and crashes, which indicated that 39 per cent of the fatalities were passengers, 36 per cent were pedestrians, 24 per cent were drivers and one per cent were cyclists.

Of these fatalities, 75 per cent were men, 22 per cent were women and three per cent were unclassified.

“Interesting are the fatalities as per the top three most affected age groupings,” she said. A total of 12 per cent of the fatalities recorded were people between the ages of 25 and 29, 13 per cent were 30 to 34 years old and nine per cent were 35 to 39 years old.

In the passenger age groups, six per cent of the fatalities were between the ages of 20 to 24, eight per cent were 25 to 29 and seven per cent were 30 to 34 years old.

Six per cent of pedestrian fatalities were in the 20 to 24 age group, while eight per cent were in the 25 to 29 age group and seven per cent were in the 30 to 34 age group.

Peters said most crashes happened between 8pm and 8am, with 25 per cent of crashes happening from 8pm to midnight, 14 per cent from midnight to 4am and 12 per cent from 4am to 8am.