Why I am scared about South Africa’s road carnage

When a major holiday season looms, I must admit that as a parent with children who all have cars, the wholesale slaughter on our roads scares me.

The last lot of holiday statistics I saw showed that instead of 1400 people being killed on the roads, only 1200 had perished. And while this is a positive trend, I don’t think there is any reason to jump for joy, because as long as our road death statistics are presented in thousands for just a single month, that still leaves us as one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to road carnage.

Not many fewer people getting slaughtered is about as optimistic as George W Bush saying that he is winning the war in Iraq.

Frankly, the chances of the government’s “Arrive Alive” campaign making any meaningful sort of impact on road deaths is remote, to say the least. We’ve heard it all before. Traffic authorities thumping zero tolerance tubs and ministers of transport threatening action against anyone transgressing the law.

Then, in spite of seeing roadblocks and zillions of police cars with flashing blue lights all over our TV screens, nothing of any significance actually happens.

There are, of course, the usual handful of devil-may-care exotic sports car owners who get trapped at 200km/h plus and cheerfully pay their hefty fines out of petty cash and bask in the media limelight. And the gruesome accidents caused by a total lack of consideration by drivers and the horror stories of unroadworthy trucks, buses and combi taxis that somehow slip through the zero-tolerance nets, to end up as mangled wrecks amid mangled bodies.

Why does this happen year after year? I think there are a number of possible reasons. The first is that there just aren’t enough traffic police around. They can’t be everywhere at the same time, and let’s face it, when so many municipalities depend on income from traffic violations such as speeding and parking illegally, it is difficult to spare enough traffic police to patrol the roads just to stop people getting killed. There’s no money in that.

Then there are the combi taxis. They were responsible for one road death out of ten last December as a result of always being in a huge hurry, having no regard to the rules of the road, and often being unroadworthy to the point of being moving miracles.

The biggest problem with taxis is not the mayhem they cause directly, but the example they set. It has become abundantly clear that by far most formerly law abiding South African motorists are frustrated beyond imagination at what taxis get away with: ignoring traffic lights, overtaking on solid white lines, frenetic lane changing, driving in emergency lanes and on pavements, and so on.

A natural reaction to this impunity is to say: “If they can get away with it, so can we!” Which I reckon is why we are seeing so many ordinary motorists doing such extraordinarily stupid things every day.

Why don’t the authorities really clamp down on taxis if indeed they are the root cause of the problem? Well, its not easy because there is a lot of money involved. And a lot of politics. It’s a huge industry generating massive revenue and massive employment, and it’s safe to say that if every unroadworthy taxi was taken off the streets and every inexperienced driver taken out of the driving seat, not only would a lot of commuters be stranded, but a lot of petrol wouldn’t be sold, and a lot of spares, tyres and so on wouldn’t be bought.

The major problem with taxis is that the owners of taxi fleets don’t pay their drivers until they have achieved a certain minimum turnover in fares for the day. So understandably, it’s hardly surprising that taxi drivers are reckless. If they slow down and obey the law, they don’t eat.

It’s a terrible dilemma facing the authorities—working out how many deaths are acceptable in terms of keeping such an enormous contributor to the economy going.

This year “Arrive Alive” is spending half its budget on marketing with ads promoting road safety. Why aren’t these working? Simple. All that the ads can do is to promote road safety, not enforce it. Until every serious road abuser gets jailed for breaking the law, all the ads in the world won’t save a single life.

I think it a waste of time appealing to South Africans to be more considerate. It is a waste spending millions on ad campaigns. While the real culprits might well see or hear these messages, they’ll think they’re aimed at someone else.

Don’t we all think that?