While road fatalities declined by 6.2% during the 2025/26 festive season, the 1 427 lives lost in crashes during the period remain a serious concern, Transport Minister Barbara Creecy said today.

The Witness reports that Creecy was speaking at a media briefing where she tabled a preliminary report on the 2025/26 Festive Season Road Safety Campaign, describing the continued loss of life on South Africa’s roads as a ‘national shame’.

“Death on our roads is not like old age. There is nothing inevitable or unavoidable about it,” Creecy said.

“Analysis of reported crashes throughout the year confirms that human behaviour, and particularly reckless driving behaviour, remains the leading cause of road trauma. Speeding and drunk driving remain the major causes of road accidents.”

She said South Africa’s current drinking and driving laws, formulated nearly three decades ago, were no longer acceptable.

“In today’s South Africa, it is totally unacceptable that there is a law that allows people to drink and then drive. I have never understood this.”

Creecy said government will move to amend section 65 of the National Road Traffic Act  93 of 1996 to introduce an unambiguous policy prohibiting drinking and driving, calling for the scrapping of laws that allow motorists to consume alcohol and then get behind the wheel.

KZN recorded the highest alcohol-related driving offence in the country, with one motorist testing at 14 times the legal alcohol limit.

Nationally, 8 561 drivers tested positive for alcohol out of more than 173 000 motorists tested, an increase compared with the same period last year.

The report also showed a sharp spike in crashes and fatalities between December 15 and 28, a two-week period that accounted for more than 40% of all festive season crashes and deaths.

A total of 1 427 people were killed in 1 172 crashes during the festive season, marking the lowest number of crashes in five years, although the number of fatalities remained unchanged from the 2023/24 festive period.

“This reconfirms that festive season crashes and fatalities increase once travellers have reached their destinations and are engaging in festivities, rather than during peak travel periods,” Creecy said.

She said most fatal crashes occurred over weekends between 19:00 and 21:00, and again between midnight and 01:00, and typically involved pedestrian collisions, hit-and-run incidents, single-vehicle rollovers and head-on collisions.

While five provinces recorded declines in fatalities, led by the Eastern Cape and the Free State, KZN featured prominently in the report. eThekwini was listed among the metros recording the highest number of pedestrian fatalities, alongside Cape Town, Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nkangala District.

Creecy said pedestrian deaths remained a major national concern, noting that nearly half of all road fatalities involved people walking along or crossing roads, particularly in urban and rural areas.

During the festive season, law enforcement officers conducted 1 632 roadblocks, stopping and checking 1.8 million vehicles. More than 450 000 traffic fines were issued, 525 motorists were arrested for excessive speeding, and 89 drivers were arrested for attempting to bribe traffic officers.

Small motor vehicles accounted for 55% of crashes, followed by light delivery vehicles, while minibus taxis and trucks were involved in 7% and 6% of crashes, respectively.

Looking at the year as a whole, Creecy said 2025 recorded the lowest annual road death toll in five years, with 11 418 fatalities from 9 674 crashes, down from 12 581 deaths in 2021.

Despite the improvement, Creecy said more decisive action was needed.

“The time has come for an unambiguous policy that says drinking and driving is not allowed.”

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