Reduction in festive road deaths no reason to gloat says AA

The decline in the number of festive season road fatalities has been attributed to the reduced traffic volumes due to Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, with the Automobile Association (AA) lamenting that road safety has unfortunately not improved.

Releasing the December road crashes statistics on Friday, Transport minister Fikile Mbalula said overall, there were a total of 1 448 fatalities from 1 210 fatal crashes, which he said represented a 7% decline in fatalities and 10.3% decline in fatal crashes, year-on-year.

Traffic volumes had declined from 1 556 704 vehicles on the road the previous year, to 1 419 782, with a significant decline in traffic volumes on the N4, at 110 676 vehicles recorded compared to 208 883 vehicles recorded during the period last year.

Also Read: WATCH LIVE: Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula releases festive season road death statistics

“The curfew was intensified and South Africans are observing the curfew… I think people constrained themselves. The number of people travelling have dropped because everyone is trying to be safe,” Mbalula said.

He said, however, that driver fatalities increased from 24.2% to 26.9%, passenger fatalities increased from 32.2% to 34.5% while cyclist fatalities stood at 1%.

Graphic: Costa Makola

Seizing the rueful moment to gloat, Mbalula said “we are encouraged that these reductions make a positive contribution towards the realisation of our target of reducing fatalities on our roads”.

But the AA have charged that government’s current road safety initiatives were useless and will never reduce fatalities, unless much more is done to correct the “annual national disaster”.

“The Minister notes… that the reduction of pedestrian fatalities by 4.9% on the previous year is ‘notable’ but our view is that this is a nominal decrease which does not address root problems. Pedestrians are an extremely vulnerable road user group with the highest rate of deaths on our roads yet, it seems, no meaningful efforts to reduce these numbers are being made,” the association said in a statement.

The association lamented that it has become routine to accept that road traffic fatalities will continue, or decrease nominally, annually, without more being done to reverse the situation.

The Traffic Law Enforcement Review Committee, established by former Transport Minister Dipuo Peters in 2016, made several recommendations regarding traffic law enforcement, which have been considered a major component of road safety.

Also Read: WATCH: Mbalula talks tough on newly proposed traffic laws

“Among those was the doubling of traffic law enforcers on our country’s roads, and the adoption of a Graduated Driver Licensing System (GDLS) with a 24-month probationary period for new drivers. These are practical measures to improve the situation on our roads but, sadly, little has been done to implement them,” the AA argued.

Chairperson of Justice Project SA Howard Dembovsky said the figures mean there has been an overall decrease in deaths, but that it is the percentages of types of road users killed has shifted.

“Essentially, all it says is that the curfew was more effective in respect of pedestrians,” he said.

siphom@citizen.co.za

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