Behaviour of some road users blamed for festive season road crashes

Several roads across the country remained busy on Monday afternoon as holidaymakers made their return home.

Speaking to The Citizen, spokesperson for the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) Simon Zwane said at some point 1088 vehicles passed through the Nyl tollgate on the N1 south.

“Another busy road was the N3 where 1 832 vehicles passed through De Hoek tollgate direction north and 1 743 through Wilge tollgate direction north.

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“Still on the N3, the Tugela tollgate recorded 1 773 vehicles passing through in the north direction and 1 721 in the north direction of the Mooi tollgate,” Zwane said.

While it appears many motorists were well behaved on the roads this time around, Zwane reiterated concerns raised about the behaviour of pedestrians.

“While motorists planned their trips accordingly, it was the issue of pedestrian behavior that stood out as a major challenge on the roads,” said Zwane.

Over the weekend, the Gauteng Traffic Department (GTD) said they had to deal with incidents of pedestrians drinking in public, walking along or crossing freeways.

According to GTD spokesperson Obed Sibasa, the province has recorded a lot of fatal road crashes since the start of the festive.

“More than 100 fatal road crashes have been recorded to date and most of them can be attributed to attitude and behaviour of road users such as unsafe overtaking resulting in head-on collisions, over speeding and pedestrians jaywalking,” said Sibasa.

Meanwhile, more than 3000 people were already arrested on the eve of New Year’s Eve for various road traffic infringements.

The RTMC added that 196 166 traffic fines have been issued, while 3679 vehicles were impounded.

4 448 drivers were also arrested for various offences including drunken driving, speeding, reckless and negligent driving as well as driving without driving licenses.

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