Planning to cut the speed limit to reduce accidents is “absurd”.
That’s the view of driving skills expert Rob Handfield-Jones in response to Transport Minister S’bu Ndebele’s plans to ask the cabinet to drop South Africa’s top-speed limit from 120km/h to 100km/h.
“The minister has been advised on repeated occasions that the only route to safer roads is to create more responsible road users,” said Handfield-Jones.
“This can be sustainably achieved by a thorough overhaul of the licensing system and the implementation of a traffic prosecution regime which focuses on safety rather than profit. Speed control has yet to yield any reductions in fatalities since it was adopted as policy in 1997.
“On the contrary, it has driven up the fatality rate by diverting policing resources from the offences that are proven to cause fatal crashes.”
Ndebele, after he had visited the scene of a fatal accident, announced this week that road carnage was reaching a crisis and he wanted the maximum speed limit reduced.
“There are increasing calls and signs that something drastic needs to be done to arrest the current situation. Studies conducted in other countries such as Australia, where the speed limit is 110km/h, indicate that a reduction in speed limit can save lives,” he said.
Handfield-Jones, however, accused the minister of misrepresenting the Australian statistics, and pointed out that minibus taxis and buses were supposed to have been restricted to a 100km/h limit, but this hadn’t helped.
“Speed restrictions played a negligible role in reducing Australia’s fatality rate – it was one of the lowest in the world long before limited areas were restricted to 110km/h,” he said.
“The minister conveniently avoids mentioning that freeways in these same areas with speed limits of 130km/h have also shown a reduction in fatalities. Indeed, the safest freeways in the world, Germany’s autobahns, are limit-free for long stretches.”
Handfield-Jones said that despite the lower speed limit for buses and taxis imposed about 10 years ago, the fatality rate for buses had jumped 30 percent from 2005 to 2006.
“Lower speed limits have not reduced fatalities on taxis and buses, and they will not do so for other vehicles. The only result of the minister’s absurd proposal will be extra traffic fine cash for municipalities which have fallen into financial disarray through rampant corruption and mismanagement.”
Handfield-Jones said speed enforcement levels were at least eight times higher than in 1998.
“Of every million fines issued by the Johannesburg metropolitan police department, 989 000 are for speed. Despite this blitz of speed enforcement, fatality rates are approximately triple what they were in 1998.”
He said the fatality rate could only be guessed at as the last time the government released statistics for the number of fatalities per 100 million vehicle kilometres – the international benchmark for road safety – was in 2006.
He said the 2006 figure was double the 1998 level.
“Furthermore, we are almost in 2012, but the government has yet to release traffic statistics for 2010,” he said.
The minister’s suggestion also surprised Howard Dembovsky, the national chairman for the non-profit Justice Project South Africa.
Dembovsky called for “the 17 000-odd traffic officers in this country, their bosses and the minister himself to start taking the role of traffic law enforcement seriously. It is no good running around bringing new legislation – and adjustments to current legislation before cabinet – when current laws are not being enforced properly.”
Dembovsky said there was no comparison between South Africa and Australia.
“Head-on collisions – of which there have been many in the last two months – are almost always resultant from one or more parties committing one or more moving violations prior to the collision occurring.
“Similarly, it has been repeatedly stated by the Department of Transport, the RTMC (Road Traffic Management Corporation) and countless others that collisions are almost always preceded by the commission of a moving violations. Yet for some obscure reason, law enforcement authorities insist on focusing almost exclusively on camera-based speed prosecution, instead of concentrating on truly dangerous moving violations,” said Dembovsky.
He said drunk driving was a huge problem, too, and was not being properly addressed.
The Transport Department has set up a transport hotline number – 0861 400 800 – for any one to report road offences.