“The Conference was a tremendous success. As South Africa, we are humbled to have had a chance to give an account of the mid-term progress on the “UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020”, pronounced Dipuo Peters, Honourable Minister of Transport in South Africa at the end of 2nd day of the Global Summit held in Brazil.
The Minister emphasised “that key progress South Africa accounted for were the remarkable strides we have made in crystallising the importance of managing risks relating to the safety of children on our roads”.
Through road safety school programme drive executed by the Road Entities of the National Department of Transport and the corporate sector of South Africa, pedestrian crossings, speed calming measures, promotion of road safety education through scholar patrol programmes and integration of road safety as part of the Department of Basic Education’s Life Skills programme are some of the remarkable interventions that the country reported on, explained Peters.
Part of the resolutions and key lessons learnt with the South African Delegation participation in the 2nd Global Road Safety Summit held in Brasilia, November 18-19 included the following:
- Re-configuration and prioritisation of the road safety management. This also speaks to the need for establishment of a legislators’ network ensuring a multifaceted and evidence driven intervention to address key road safety challenges in the country.
- Diversification of the Traffic Policing mind-set to be more educational towards the road user whilst also utilising statistics and evidence to refocus strategies to address trending risk areas from time to time. “It has been eye-opening to learn from successful countries such as Brazil, Sweden and Australia, that for a road traffic police to make an impact on road crashes, he/she need to educate the road user about the objectives behind their policing, thereby making users more cooperative and compliant”, Peters highlighted this point.
- According to Minister Peters, the drive towards implementing effective road safety policies has been identified to be central in collaborations with multinationals, the corporate sector and civic society organisations. This is one of the key learnings she says the South African delegation picked from the Latin America and the Caribbean counterparts in road safety management. “The drive towards policy reform and enhanced compliance in these countries has been achieved through civic society leadership and activism Post Brasilia: The Declaration for the Last Leg of the Decade of Action on Road Safety” .
The Minister wishes to highlight the outcomes of the revised declaration as it pertains to the South African context. Out of the resolutions of the conference that ended on Thursday, 19 November 2015, South Africa’s road safety machinery will be focusing on the following priorities:
- Youth activism in the promotion of road safety policies and enhanced compliance amongst the most vulnerable
- Enhance management of road safety for children ensuring continued emphasis on child-restraints and promotion of road safety for kids
- Continued support for Road Traffic Management Systems (RTMS) and the implementation of RTMS (SANS 1395) for ISO 39001, including a focus on Government Fleet, Public Transport and the Mines.
- Refocusing the road engineering, infrastructure development and the road safety strategy towards implementation of the “Safe Systems Approach”, a system more empathetic to eliminate mistakes that mankind is prone to commit and ensuring that the road infrastructure and the vehicles used amortise the extent of injury and prevent death in the event of an accident resulting from human errors.
Multi-lateral agreements across all sectors and internationally to professionalise road safety through academic development programmes and twinning partnerships to ensure South Africa develops a cadreship of road safety managers to implement the sustainable development goals on road safety for the next decade and beyond.
South Africa needs to vigorously rally the support and active participation of multi-national companies, business sector, civic society and NGOs to leverage on their tried and tested best practises in managing road safety for their companies, as well as attain resources to fund the country’s road safety agenda as a matter of priority.
To this extent South Africa can export its best practises through the active involvement and participation of the Road Safety Advisory Council, the interfaith movement, youth and civic society organisations for attaining the policy priorities and goals on road safety.
