The newly appointed Minister of Transport Sindisiwe Chikunga reflected on the busy Easter period and reported that more people lost their lives during this year’s Easter holidays, as opposed to last year.
This information was revealed at the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) offices in Midrand on April 14, where Chikunga had a briefing, and tabled the 2023 Easter Road Safety Statistics.
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Chikunga said this year’s Easter weekend resulted in more fatalities as opposed to last year.
“Ladies and gentlemen allow me to express my profound disappointment and displeasure at the high rate of crashes and fatalities experienced during this Easter long weekend. The total number of fatal crashes this year is 185 resulting in 225 fatalities, as opposed to the same period the previous year when we recorded 135 fatal crashes that resulted in 161 fatalities.
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“The statistics on gender classification show that there was a decrease in female fatalities from 28 percent in 2022 to 19 percent in 2023 and male fatalities increased from 67 percent in 2022 to 70 percent.
“Most of these are young aspiring professionals whose careers were beginning to shine. They possessed the skills that are needed to grow our country’s economy and to reduce poverty, inequality, and underdevelopment,” said Chikunga.
She added that the high number of road users who perished on the roads are pedestrians, who accounted for 44,4 percent of all fatalities, followed by passengers at 27,7 percent.
Drivers accounted for 25,6 percent, cyclists at 1,3 percent, while the road user status of 1 percent could not be determined.
The highest number of pedestrians died in collisions that happened in the Western Cape, Limpopo, Gauteng, and KwaZulu-Natal.
According to the Minister, human factors, which include reckless and negligent driving were the most prominent contributing factor in all fatalities, followed by road and environmental factors, while vehicle factors were the least contributor.
