Road Traffic Management Corporation
The Eastern Cape is the only province that managed to surpass the target set for it to reduce fatalities by at least 18.6%.
That is according to Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga, who said nationally 1184 lives were lost during the past festive season, a decline of 2.3%.
She provided an update on festive season road statistics on Wednesday.
Chikunga noted the steep decline in Eastern Cape road fatalities but said one person who was arrested for drinking and driving near Butterworth, had the highest alcohol intake.
"The driver had an alcohol reading of 2.48 mg per 1000 ml of blood, which exceeds the limit of 0.24 ml of alcohol," she said.
Eastern Cape Provincial Transport Department spokesperson Unathi Binqose welcomed the provincial statistics.
"We are encouraged by the revelations by the minister and the success can be attributed to the hard work we put in during the festive season. We will take this and use it as a building block as we look forward to the Easter Arrive Alive Campaign as well as the next festive season."
According to Chikunga, the festive season was marked by heavy rainfall and storms which created challenges on the road, and therefore attributed the accidents to bad weather
"We saw in a few incidents in Kwazulu Natal, insisted on driving over flooded bridges resulting in tragedy when vehicles were washed away," she added.
Chikunga said a closer look into the crashes and fatalities of the past festive season revealed that most of the crashes occurred in the first, third, and fourth week of December. She even attributed the crashes of the first week to end-of-year bonuses and staff parties.
"The third week incorporated the long weekend, industry closure and the people started traveling while the fourth week incorporated the Christmas long weekend and it saw a massive increase in traffic volumes and festivities."
The look into the crashes and fatalities also revealed that most crashes took place between 19:00 and 22:00 with the most fatalities being recorded on Sundays
Chikunga also mentioned that 40% of the people who lost their lives on the roads were pedestrians between the ages of 25 and 44.
This is what the other province's stats look like:
The provincial breakdown of fatalities is as follows:
Free State recorded a 27.4 5% decline.
Eastern Cape recorded a 21.5% decline.
Northern Cape recorded a 15.7 % decline.
Limpopo recorded an 8.4% decline.
North West recorded a 2.1% decline.
Gauteng recorded a 7.6% increase.
KwaZulu Natal recorded a 4.2% increase.
Mpumalanga recorded a 9.7 % increase,
Western Cape recorded a 22.6 % increase
