No peaceful nights for minister

Peters voiced her concern when announcing that in the period between 1 December 2015 and 11 January 2016,

1 387 fatal accidents occurred on the roads, which represented an 11 percent increase compared to the 2014 festive season when 1 253 accidents were recorded.

Peters said, “We cannot have peace of mind when innocent children are left in a state of agony, permanent emotional and psychological torture while awaiting the arrival of their parents who will never make it home alive.

“Our days and nights will forever not be peaceful as corruption continues to rear its ugly head, mostly in our driver learner testing centres, as well as an unacceptably high number of un-roadworthy vehicles found on our roads causing more fatalities and crashes. This unacceptable state of affairs will soon come to pass.”

The minister also commended the road safety role played by the police, the South African National Defence Force, national, provincial and local departments of transport, road safety activists and practitioners, emergency medical services and health practitioners, faith-based organisations, the freight industry, Santaco and taxi associations, and all transport stakeholders during the festive season.

She said the preliminary statistics that were released tell only part of the story about road safety in the country. “A situational analysis conducted at the start of this year’s festive season indicated that the number of registered vehicles had increased by a further 340 000 at the start of December last year with 508 054 new driver’s licences issued,” Peters said.

She stated that a closer look at road accidents and fatalities over the 2015/16 festive season depicted the following trends:

•  Small motor vehicles accounted for 47.9 percent of total accidents during this season, followed by light delivery vehicles at 22.7 percent, minibuses or combis at 10.1 percent and trucks (4.8 percent).
•  The majority of people who died were passengers at 38.3 percent, followed by pedestrians at 34.9 percent. Drivers contributed to 23.9 percent of the fatalities and cyclists 2.8 percent.
•  The age group most affected in accidents was people between 25 to 39 years old, accounting for fatalities of 47.9 percent for drivers, passengers (38.5 percent) and pedestrians (34.3 percent). Children aged from one to four accounted for 10.4 percent of pedestrian deaths.
•  The gender mostly affected was males accounting for 74.4 percent of total fatalities. Females accounted for 25.2 percent. “Very disturbingly, of this number 81.4 percent is apportioned to blacks while the remainder varies between coloured, whites, Asians and foreigners,” the minister said.
•  The gender of 0.4 percent of fatalities was undetermined because the bodies were burnt beyond recognition.

The minister said most accidents occurred on weekends. The highest number of fatal accidents were recorded on Saturday (22.2 percent) followed by Friday and Sunday with 18.8 percent and 16.9 percent respectively.

The minister added that a new phenomenon had come to the fore this year with most accidents (51.4 percent) occurring between 2pm and 11pm. “This stark contrast to the norm might be confidently attributed to our relentless and resilient implementation of the 24/7 law enforcement,” Peters said.