partnership between the Public Utility Transport Corporation (PUTCO) limited
and the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) as well as the National Road
Safety Pilot Projects in support of Arrive Alive Campaign this festive season,
Rayton Community Hall, Rayton Nokeng tsa Taemane
5 December 2006
Executive Mayor of Nokeng tsa Taemane, Councillor Annah Digoro
Acting CEO of the RTMC, Mr Thabo Tsholetsane
Managing Director of PUTCO Limited, Mr Franco Pisapia
Traffic Police
Representatives of the bus and taxi industry
Ladies and gentlemen
The speech I am making represents the opportunity to take stock of the road
safety problems that confront us, especially during the festive season. Allow
me to appraise this gathering of our Arrive Alive Campaign plans and give some
attention to planned activities. Let us remember:
"The annual tragedy in traffic is not an act of fate. History has shown that
it is possible to make a successful contribution to the fight against road
accidents. Road accidents are the work of man. We create them ourselves and we
must therefore also solve the problem."
South Africa finds herself in the unfortunate situation whereby several
factors lead to the high rates of crashes due to:
* poor driver behaviour and attitude, as almost 90% of crashes follow a
traffic violation
* the existence of a "culture of impunity" in respect to payment of traffic
fines, resulting in little behaviour change for offenders.
* the average age of most vehicles being around 10 years, and the taxi fleet
being over 13 years.
* widespread fraud and corruption in the areas of driver testing and
vehicle
* first class, high-speed roads, travelling through informal settlements and
rural areas where pedestrian activities are high and pedestrian activities
inadequate. Over this festive season we are intensifying our efforts on two
fronts. On the one hand, we have expanded the focus of arrive alive beyond
traffic law enforcement and traffic safety communication to include traffic
engineering, adequacy of road signage, traffic calming measures and dedicated
pedestrian safety programmes.
I am pleased to confirm today that the final preparatory steps are now being
taken on the establishment, early in the new year of the Road Traffic
Infringement Agency. This will put in place an effective, efficient and
streamlined fine processing and collection system that will take routine
traffic offences out of our over-stretched court system to create "quick pay"
incentives for prompt fine payment and nail fine evasion through the power the
Act confers on the agency to attach defaulters' property.
The new National Road Safety Strategy, recently endorsed at the Transport
Indaba held in Soweto, is driven by the need to find answers to a set of
clearly identified interlocking problems across the whole spectrum of road
safety and traffic management. The interventions are derived from an in-depth
analysis of strengths and weaknesses in each of the three critical areas of
road safety:
The road environment, the road user and the vehicle
Critical offences and contributory factors to accidents are:
Drinking and driving, speeding, overloading of passengers and goods,
non-wearing of seatbelts, moving violations, unroadworthy vehicles and that is
where the focus will be. Traffic officers will adopt a zero tolerance approach
and do more patrols. As we implement our programmes, key to our success is
promoting the notion of personal responsibility on our roads and make it a
popular one. As we know it is much easier to blame government for the number of
lives lost than to accept that by disobeying any traffic law, you are
contributing to the lack of road safety in this country!
May I add that our approach is not only on enforcement, which puts all the
responsibility on traffic officers and none on the actual road user
-pedestrian, driver and passenger? We would like to create a culture of
compliance where disobeying the rules of the road is socially unacceptable.
This, of course, will require a 180-degree turnaround in our current attitudes
and that's why we need arrive alive: to change the attitudes and the behaviour
of road users.
During the festive season road safety is topical as more people travel long
distances, factories and schools close affecting traffic flow patterns. The
high number of road crashes means we can't fold our arms and ignore the reality
around us. In order to address these critical issues and make a visible impact,
this festive season we are launching a national rolling enforcement plan
formulated in consultation with the nine provinces, six metropolitan
authorities and one local authority. This innovative enforcement plan is a
pilot project that will be closely monitored and evaluated; it will run for a
six month period until 30 June 2007.
The Nokeng tsa Taemane Road Safety project being jointly launched today
simultaneously with our Festive Season Campaign heralds a mind shift towards
law enforcement. The success of implementing this pilot project will be
enhanced by the co-operation between the RTMC, Nokeng tsa Taemane Municipality,
Department of Community Safety, Local Traffic Department and community based
road safety forums. The decision by PUTCO Limited to donate three vehicles to
this pilot project at this time of the year strengthens the notion that "road
safety is everyone's concern". We say thank you PUTCO Limited. Moreover, new
public, private partnerships have to be forged in order to make the resolve by
government to reduce fatalities on our roads a reality as outlined in the
National Road Safety Strategy 2006 onwards.
Through the RTMC there is a realisation that public private partnerships
like the one which has been forged with PUTCO Limited not only in the Nokeng
tsa Taemane project but also on the Moloto road project, shows that business
has a major role to play in supporting initiatives to curb the carnage on our
roads. One cannot over emphasise the importance of monitoring and evaluation of
this rolling enforcement plan and supervision. The RTMC has made it a priority
to carry out these evaluations in order to arrive at conclusions that will make
our road environment safer for all road users.
The continued support we are receiving from our road safety ambassadors is
an encouraging sign that the majority of South Africans are determined to make
our country a safer place to travel.
To all the men and women in the traffic fraternity, police services,
emergency and rescue services who will be working tirelessly to ensure that
people like you and me reach our destinations safely, my heart felt thanks.
Road safety touches all of us; it is the responsibility of each and every
one of us to make our roads safer this festive season. Road safety is our top
priority and therefore every road user (a driver, passenger and pedestrian)
should keep in mind the following arrive alive safety tips:
* buckle up: seatbelts save lives
* slow down: driving too fast is a factor in 75% of fatal crashes
* be patient: a decrease of 10% in speed reduces fatal crashes by 40%;
* walk safely: wear bright clothes at night
* sober up: drunk driving leads to fatal crashes
* when tired rest every two hours or every 200kms
* service and maintain your vehicle properly.
Ke ya leboga.
Issued by: Ministry of Transport
5 December 2006
Source: SAPA
