Figures for Gauteng’s festive fatalities alarming

The national death toll for road accidents this Festive Season amounts to 1 184 and counting.

Nxumalo Busaphi, a spokesperson for the traffic police addressed News24 on the 31 December. According to her, between 1 December and 26 December there were 175 fatal crashes in Gauteng in which 177 people died. Of the fatalities 43 were drivers, 36 passengers, six were motorcyclists and four were cyclists. That means that 89 of the fatalities were pedestrians.

In at least five cases children were killed in pedestrian accidents. Some were as young as three years old. Most of them allegedly were killed running across busy roads and intersections.

Half of the accidents on highways can be attributed to pedestrians trying to cross these busy roads. There also were instances of drunken driving as well as reckless driving that were due to impatience or simple ignorance.

As is expected, 57 per cent of the accidents took place on the weekends between 3pm and midnight. In fact, 20 per cent of all the fatal accidents occurred from 6pm on Saturday to 6am on Sunday. Busaphi said that this “correlates with alcohol abuse and festive period behaviour”.

The festive period officially ends on 13 January. The national death toll is expected to rise to 1 736 by then.