Road safety can improve drastically if all road users change their behavior on the road

JOBURG – The high levels of road accidents and fatalities continue to be worrisome.

Measures have been put in place to ensure that accidents and fatalities are curbed, but we must acknowledge that no strategy or plan can work without road users changing their behaviour on the road.  All road users continue to know what it is that they must to do, but a majority just chose to ignore and disobey the rules of the road.

Major highways such as the N1 and N3 experience high volumes of traffic during the festive period, everyone is on the rush to go back to their respective home provinces, traffic congestion as we drive bumper to bumper, will be the order of the day. In all the travelling that will be undertaken by all road users be pedestrians or driver, adherence to the rules of the roads is vital so as to ensure that we all reach our destination.

According to the statistics on   Road Traffic offence survey, the most common causes of road traffic crashes are:

• Jay walking.
• Excessive Speeding
• Fatigue
• Speaking or texting while driving on the cellphones
• Not wearing seat belt
• Driving under the influence of alcohol
• Reckless and Negligent driving

Over the years statistics have shown that people who continue to outnumber the statistics of those that perish in our roads are pedestrians. This is also due to ignorance and negligence, people just cross the road without looking at traffic lights, cross the road with their ear and head phone, jaywalking etc.

During the current 2012/13 financial year the Gauteng Department of Community Safety conducted 2053 road safety educational programmes  in primary, middle and high schools, various companies particularly heavy duty vehicles, buses and taxi ranks. This was to reinforce road safety education and the importance of adhering to all the rules of the road at all times.

In line with one strategic the Gauteng Department of Community, safety outcomes, reduction in road fatalities, the deployment of Gauteng Traffic Police has focused on high visibility on hazardous locations with an aim to realise a 50% reduction on road fatalities by 2014.The Gauteng Traffic Police jointly with other law enforcement agencies have identified provincial and municipal hazardous locations, our main focus during the 2012/2013 festive plan is the deployment of officers according to hazardous locations time’s slots. Due to the fact that majority of crashes and fatalities are as a result of behaviour on our roads, special attention will given to the following offences;

• Excessive speeding
• Reckless and negligent driving
• Driving under the influence of alcohol
• Overloading of goods and passengers
• Driving an unroadworthy vehicles
• Pedestrian on the Freeways
• Driving a vehicle without drivers License
• Operating public transport without a permit
• Permitting or allowing an unlicensed driver to driver a motor vehicle
• Drag racing

These traffic violations will be punishable with immediate arrest, no fine or admission of guilt.  This will ensure that innocent lives of the law abiding citizens are not compromised in anyway by irresponsible drivers.  All Law Enforcement Agencies will operate jointly to deal harshly with vehicle and driver fitness, crime prevention, law enforcement on public and private transport will be conducted.

As indicated in the beginning all these measures are in place, but if we can all act responsible and obey all the rules of the road, death tolls on our roads can be reduced drastically. Behavioral change is most important, change in the way in which we normally behave on the roads and strive to do what we all know is right. If we all to go back to basics that we were all taught at our respective driving schools , a different picture will be painted on our roads. We all wish to wake up to an accident free road, roads that we can all be proud of.

Faith Mazibuko is the MEC for Community Safety in Gauteng