How to fix the climbing road death toll

If scapegoats were actual, physical animals, the ANC government would need to set up special pens for the numbers it has been accumulating.

Latest to join the flock is the suggestion that lowering speed limits around the country across the board will reduce the horrendous carnage on our roads.

The proposal is that the national highway limit be lowered from 120km/h to 100km/h and, in urban areas where there are high concentrations of pedestrians, the limit be reduced from 60km/h to 40km/h.

While we do see some sense in reducing urban limits to 40km/h in high-risk areas – where there is a lot of pedestrian movement or near a school, for example – we question the wisdom of reducing the open-road limit to 100km/h.

In a country like ours, where people travel vast distances, this will increase travel times and the risk of drivers falling asleep at the wheel.

Just as in many horror accidents where “the road” has been blamed by the authorities, rather than the arrogance and incompetence of drivers, so too is an inanimate thing – speed – being identified as a “killer”. Look at the big bad speed, everybody!

All this apportioning culpability to factors other than the obvious, and most catastrophic, human ones, not only diverts attention from the real culprits, but allows the authorities to gloss over their woefully inadequate traffic policing.

Tougher rules – for speed and for alcohol levels – mean nothing if they are not enforced, and merely provide a greater range of opportunities of law enforcement personnel to take bribes. The same is true of the much-vaunted Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offence (Aarto) legislation.

However, the bottom line is that better enforcement, better education and driver training and a zero-tolerance approach to corruption are the only certain way to arrest the climbing road death toll.

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