Programme Director
Honorable Ministers
Directors-General
Permanent Secretaries
Distinguished guests
Members of the media
All protocol observed
Our country fully supports and has whole heartedly adopted the Decade of Action for Road Safety call by the Commission of Global Road Safety, and endorsed by the UN Road Safety Collaboration.
The current road safety trend of losing 14 000 lives every year, most of whom are economically active youth, is not sustainable to our environment nor to the future of South Africa.
Our younger and coming generations should not be subjected to the double impact of the adverse effect of climate change and compromised road safety.
To this extent South Africa is fervently implementing and encouraging initiatives to focus on the five pillars of road safety, which underpin the recommendations of the World report on road traffic injury prevention.
Road deaths in Africa
In countries in Africa, up to half of all hospital surgical beds are occupied by patients injured on roads.
In others, deaths from road traffic crashes come second only to HIV/AIDS for males aged 15 to 44 years.
Africa has the highest road injury fatality rate of all World Health Organisation regions, at 28,3 per 100 000 population.
In addition to the health impacts, traffic crashes come at a high cost to African countries.
These deaths are a massive burden on our society:
In 2002, traffic crashes cost Uganda and Malawi an estimated 2,3% and 5%, respectively, of their gross domestic product (GDP).
In the 1990s, they were estimated to cost Cote d'Ivoire 1% of the country's GDP every year.
The United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020
Honourable Ministers and Delegates, today we launch "The SADC Decade of Action for Road Safety". This launch is a clarion call for the SADC region and the African Continent to heed the United Nations (UN) call for us to halve traffic fatalities by 2015.
Over 1,3 million people die every year on the world's roads, and 50 million more are injured. Road crashes are the number one killer of young people worldwide. The human cost is profound - resulting in unimaginable suffering and grief. The economic cost is a staggering 100 billion US dollars a year in developing countries alone. These are grim statistics.
The UN Decade of Action for Road Safety is our chance to save lives: each of us has a role to play in preventing deaths and injuries on the road. Let us all work together to make sure the world's roads are safe. If we lead by example we can save millions and millions of lives. This is what the United Nations is working very hard for a safer world for all.
Update on NREP
For our part, South Africa has developed and implemented a 3year National Rolling Enforcement Plan (NREP) which commenced in Oct 2010. The NREP is an effort to improve visible law enforcement and to check a million vehicle and drivers monthly in 1000 roadside activities every day.
Between 1 October 2010 and 31 July 2011,
- 11 745 526 vehicles and drivers had been checked,
- 4 847 526 fines issued for various traffic offences,
- 17 758 drunk drivers were arrested and
- 46 843 un-roadworthy vehicles (the majority of which are buses and taxis) were discontinued from use.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the biggest success of the NREP is the alignment of traffic operations along monthly thematic approaches. Furthermore,
There remain many challenges in respect of compliance among road users.
The high-profile crashes of the past five weeks that led to the loss of more than 100 people proves that we still have a long way to go to reduce offences and crashes.
We are revising the NREP to focus on the following critical areas:
- Medical Research Council's figures indicate that more than 60% of fatal crashes, especially over weekends are as a result of abuse of alcohol, either by a driver or a pedestrian. As a result I have instructed that as part of Operation Tshwara Setagwa (Arrest the Drunkard) officers must arrest one drunkard, per officer per month which theoretically means that we should have arrested a minimum of 10 000 drunken drivers per month. Arrests will include drunken pedestrians.
- A concerted effort will be made regarding dangerous driving. Motorists should be arrested for excessive speeding, reckless and negligent driving and barrier line infringement.
- Public passenger transport enforcement will continue and operators that do not comply with permit requirements, who are guilty of gross overloading and operate vehicles that un-roadworthy will be arrested.
- Research has proven conclusively that if we can increase the seatbelt wearing rate by 80% for both front and rear passengers there is a potential to reduce fatalities by 25 - 30%. We are therefore calling on all South African to buckle up at all times. Seatbelts save lives. It will not prevent one from having a crash, but it will certainly reduce of death or serious injury by 50%.
- The benefits of seatbelts are therefore enormous. We cannot continue to ignore seatbelts as a critical safety feature and all South Africans can make a difference by buckling up. (Don't be a "moegoe" by not buckling up!)
- Distracted driving particularly in urban areas is becoming a huge problem: motorists daily are seen talking on the cell and now, even texting while driving.
- Talking while driving increases your chances of being involved in a crash by four times. Texting while driving is far more dangerous.
If we are to change culture we must focus on our young people who are the motorists of tomorrow. Instilling a sense of appreciation for road safety and developing a culture of responsible road usage will shape the future of road safety in South Africa.
We will continue to focus on primary schools and have developed multi-media road safety education materials with the aim to improve the effectiveness of road safety education programmes in schools.
To address these problems, as part of a battery of new measures for road safety, we have proposed that implementing a Graduate Licensing System consisting of three distinct stages namely:
- a learner's permit,
- intermediate (provisional or probationary) licence,
- followed by a full licence.
The lights-on campaign will be resuscitated. During the holiday season, we will request all motorists to drive with their headlamps switched on during the day (daylight running lights).
We urge all road users to report bad driving to the National Traffic Call Centre on 0861 400 800.
Thank you
