Road safety industry experts call for stronger action on road safety issues in South Africa
With the recent festive season road carnage still fresh in mind, and which claimed over 1 300 lives, road safety industry experts met today at a roundtable to discuss how this growing problem can be effectively addressed. The2013/2014 festive season’s high death toll saw up to 38 or more lives being lost each day, making it one of the most fatal festive seasons to date, and it is known that road safety plays a critical role in decreasing these accidents and deaths.
Hosted by Discovery Insure, this roundtable consisted of industry experts such as Gilberto Martins, Former Acting CEO for the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC); Howard Dembovsky, National Chairman: Justice Project South Africa; Professor Sebastian van As, Chairperson: Global Road Safety Partnership South Africa and Themba Baloyi, Discovery Insure Executive Director.
The roundtable focused on stimulating discussion in the industry on how we, as a nation, can work together to increase road safety awareness and find sustainable solutions to curbing our country’s high road accident rate, and help prevent unnecessary deaths.
Some of the issues discussed at the roundtable were the importance of creating sustainable solutions such as ensuring that all South Africans start making road safety awareness a priority in day-to-day lives; road safety education for all road users, including pedestrians who are the largest number of road users and more vulnerable to road accidents; and recognising that road accidents are the number one cause of deaths in South Africa, exceeding crime, and that we can do something about it.
Experts unpacked the reasons for why people engage in risky driving behaviour, which contributes to the country’s high road accident rate. There was an agreed consensus that the top three irresponsible, risky driving behaviours are drinking and driving, speeding and cellphone use and texting while driving. Experts discussed how the culture that makes it acceptable for people to drive after drinking needs to be changed, and how drivers need to learn that speeding puts both themselves, their passengers and other road users at risk, and learn to share the road responsibly with others. Some experts called out for more stringent laws and strict penalties in place to prohibit cellphone use and texting while driving should be strongly disencouraged, especially as statistics show that a driver’s risk for being involved in an accident while on a cellphone rises by seven times, and the risk for texting while driving rises by 23 times.
Commenting on some of these issues discussed at the roundtable was Professor Sebastian van As, who said that all road users must acknowledge the responsibility they have when they are using the roads as “the impact of road crashes is enormous, for not only are they emotional – they also have an economic impact, and impacts on lives in the long term. Road crashes have a negative impact on many aspects of society, and cost the country over R300 billion, an amount that exceeds the budgets of both the education and health departments.” Van As went on to say that the number of road accident related deaths we witness “are only the tip of the iceberg, as for every person dying, many more will be injured, and hospitalised, often sustaining permanent disability from these crashes.”
Concluding the roundtable, Themba Baloyi thanked all the experts for their time, expertise and views. He said, “It is important for us, our stakeholders, government and all South Africans to work together to create ongoing sustainable solutions to reducing our country’s high road accident rate, and becoming safer, more responsible road users, which is aligned with Discovery Insure’s vision of creating a nation of safer drivers.”