Road deaths – further analysis needed

‘Worried Motorist’ writes:- THE government tell us that over 1,300 people were killed on our roads over the holiday season in December, an appalling figure that makes a mockery of any road safety campaign by the Department of Transport. But I think we need to analyse this figure, and then from the analysis future campaigns can target specific sectors. We need to be told where these fatal accidents happened – highways, in town, in townships, in cities, on rural roads. We need to know what time of day these accidents happened so that law enforcement can have its greatest visibility at the crucial times. We need to be told how many of these people were pedestrians, how many were drunk pedestrians, how many were drunk pedestrians on urban roads, highways, dirt roads secondary roads. It may be that the campaign should consist of posters in township taverns. The point is, that it is no use having a “Buckle Up” campaign if half the fatalities are intoxicated pedestrians. We need to know how many of the fatalities who are not pedestrians, were drivers. Passengers who die are, in a way, collateral damage. Except for telling them to buckle up, passengers are at the mercy of drivers. We need to know how many drivers were killed, and to that figure should be added the drivers who were involved in accidents who were not killed. The analysis should not be driven only by deaths but by accidents as a whole. People who have lucky escapes are no less worthy of consideration in planing future campaigns. The drivers’ total should be broken down. The drivers’ ages should be analysed, their gender, how long they’ve had their licences, and yes, even their race, however unpopular, or as un-politically correct that might be as a category. For a start it might persuade the authorities to put their campaign message in a language other than English. It might also tell the traffic officials that there is little point in having a speed trap at 10:30pm in the vicinity of an establishment traditionally frequented by whites, when overloaded buses are leaving Nongoma at just after lunch.