JOHANNESBURG, January 10 (ANA) – Transport Minister Dipuo Peters on Tuesday blamed unqualified and reckless drivers for the significant increase in road crashes and fatalities that occurred during the past festive season, saying that drivers needed to change their behaviour on the roads.
According to the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), road crashes and fatalities increased by five percent for the 2016/17 festive season to 1,714 compared to the 2015/16 period.
Peters said there was an influx of incompetent drivers on South African roads.
Light-motor vehicles contributed 49 percent to the total number of crashes, followed by light delivery vehicles at a contribution of 18 percent, and mini-bus vehicles which contributed 10 percent.
“While we accept that the back-to-back extended long weekends that characterised the 2016/17 festive period posed a big challenge to road safety and that the rainy weather provided a complicating factor, we must equally accept that in most instances the competence of our drivers leaves much to be desired,” Peters said.
“The fact that an overwhelming majority of fatal crashes were as a result of a single-motor vehicle overturning and head-on collisions points to the incompetence of our drivers to handle their motor vehicles.”
Peters said traffic law enforcement officers had conducted more than 432 roadblocks throughout the country during the festive season and issued 453,263 fines for various traffic offences.
“Of particular interest is that 28,238 of these fines were for drivers who failed to wear seat-belts while 4,046 were for using cellphones while driving,” Peters said.
Peters then took aim at alleged corruption that occurred at driver’s licence testing centres, saying that her department would be intensifying investigations on how driver’s licenses and certificates of road-worthiness were issues.
“This buttresses the point and aspersions rampant corruption within our Drivers Licencing and Testing Centres compounded by the voluntary collusion and participation by our road users in their unflinching desire to acquire driver’s licences.
“I have instructed the Road Traffic Management Corporation to undertake an an audit of how driving licences as well as roadworthy certificates are processed and issued in our testing stations, so that we can have an appreciation of how it is possible that so many incompetent drivers and unroadworthy vehicles could be on our roads.”
According to RTMC, the Eastern Cape recorded the biggest decline in fatalities with a 20 percent reduction to 211 deaths compared to 265 deaths for the same period in 2015.
Limpopo recorded the highest increase of road fatalities of 31 percent, moving from 186 deaths in 2015 to 244 in the 2016 festive period.
– African News Agency (ANA)
