Ending road carnage: permanent solutions needed beyond politicians’ seasonal campaigns

It’s that time of the year again – when our politicians squeeze themselves into “high visibility” yellow and orange jackets and launch themselves into the fray on our behalf to fight to reduce the number of road deaths.

As Layton Beard of the Automobile Association correctly pointed out, this political “high visibility” extends over five weeks of the year – Easter and the December-January holidays.

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The other 47 weeks you will not see them. Unless, of course, there is another horrific smash and they will be drawn to the TV cameras, as moths to a flame, to express their condolences.

And yet, despite the energetic efforts of our cadres supporting traffic cops around the country, motorists and pedestrians continued to die in incidents at the long weekend that were mostly avoidable, were it not for human behaviour.

The N1 highway towards Polokwane continued to see some of the worst contempt for road traffic law, as emergency lanes and even oncoming traffic lanes were turned into extra carriageways.

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Those lawless attitudes prevail because people know they will never be caught and, even if they are, a quick “cooldrink” contribution will see them on their way, unhindered, from a road block.

Beard also stated that our road carnage will continue until we have a fully professional – and ethical and incorruptible, we would add – traffic enforcement force.

Proper, motivated traffic cops will focus on moving violations, with the power to confiscate the vehicles of serious offenders… and they will be ruthless when it comes to sniffing out false licences.

At the same time, corruption – the poison which fuels the carnage – must be rooted out entirely within the law enforcement community.

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Offenders must not only lose their jobs, they must be jailed. If our politicians don’t deal with that elephant in the room, the rest of their words will be meaningless.