PRETORIA, March 29 – A 46 percent decline was recorded in this year’s Easter road fatalities, compared to 2015, South African Transport Minister Dipuo Peters said on Tuesday.
“The report we are presenting this morning is preliminary and statistics will be compared to the report of last year. This report entails figures from Thursday, March 24, to Monday, March 28, 2016,” Peters told reporters in Pretoria.
“The report indicates that there were 156 fatalities on the roads this year, compared to 287 fatalities for the same period last year. This presents a much welcomed 46 percent decline.”
She said with the exception of the Northern Cape, which recorded the same number of deaths as last year, all other provinces recorded a decrease in the number of fatalities.
“Notably, the North West recorded the highest decrease of 71 percent with the number of fatalities reduced from 28 to eight. They were followed by the Free State with a decrease of 52 percent, fatalities reduced from 23 to 11,” said Peters.
She said the road fatalities had decreased in spite of an increase in the number of registered vehicles in South Africa by 333,226, which represented a three percent increase. The total number of registered vehicles in the country as at February stood at 11,7 million.
During the Easter holiday, the busiest roads were the N1 north through Pretoria, Polokwane and Beitbridge, the N3 south towards Durban, the N4 from Pretoria to Nelspruit and Komatipoort and N1 from Magaung to the Western Cape.
– African News Agency (ANA)
