Cape Town - Between 2005 and 2014 more than 2800 pedestrians were hit by cars in Cape Town alone, with more than 450 of the cases resulting in serious injury, according to the Western Cape department of transport and public works.
It’s a problem that traffic chief Kenny Africa says remains a big issue for authorities. He added that four people died on the province’s roads at the weekend, “two pedestrians, one driver and one passenger were killed”.
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SA’s ‘staggering’ road death toll
Africa said a driver that was five times over the legal limit was arrested near Vredenburg during roadblocks at the weekend.
“We tested 1750 drivers and arrested 18 for drunk driving. We also arrested four other drivers for offences such as false documentation and possession of illegal substances. One driver was arrested for assaulting an officer in Knysna.”
To address the number of pedestrian-related accidents, the department, in collaboration with Open Streets Cape Town, will test a new campaign to raise awareness about pedestrian safety starting on Monday.
The campaign, called “Streetiquette”, is inspired by a popular form of engagement in Latin America in which colourful performances and interactive theatre are used to tackle unsafe and irresponsible behaviour on urban streets by motorists and pedestrians.
MEC for transport and public works Donald Grant said that the Safely Home campaign had been bold in addressing road deaths and saw a 30 percent decrease between 2008 and 2013.
“Since then, however, our growing efforts have seen little change beyond our fatality levels remaining stable in the face of continued rapid expansion in human and vehicle populations.
“The need is now more pronounced than ever for continued innovation, in changing poor road user behaviour, through initiatives such as the Streetiquette campaign,” he said.
GLOBAL EFFORT TO REDUCE ROAD DEATHS
Traffic authorities around the world are paying increasing attention to the safety of pedestrians - whose loss of life makes up 40 percent of South Africa’s road deaths.
Speaking at the Second High-level Conference on Road Safety, held in Brasilia last week, South African minister of transport Dipuo Peters said this was one of the main focuses of her department over the past five years.
More than 3000 people die on roads across the world each day and these past five years were also the first half of the Decade of Action for Road Safety, an initiative that saw countries pledge to implement measures by 2020 that would curb road deaths by half, from 1.25 million deaths a year to 600 000.
The Global Status on Road Safety 2015 report indicated that despite increased motorisation, road deaths appeared to be plateauing, but more work needed to be done to curb fatalities.
Peters said pedestrians were at risk because they shared road space with motorists, but the risk was exacerbated by people crossing roads unsafely.
PEDESTRIANS AT RISK
She said 73 places in South Africa had been identified as “problem areas”, where dangerous crossings were common, and remedial measures had been taken by building 10 bridges and 230km of pavements dedicated to pedestrians and cyclists. This group, including motorcyclists, made up 49 percent of road traffic deaths worldwide.
The report showed that the main cause of death of those aged between 15 and 29 were crashes. The provision of road safety and awareness at community and school level was the key to reducing deaths, Peters said, adding that more than 600 000 pupils had been reached through these campaigns.
Make Roads Safe ambassador Zoleka Mandela - whose daughter Zenani, 13, was killed in a car crash in 2010 after a pre-World Cup concert - also made an impassioned plea for road safety at the conference. She called for “serious action” to be taken by addressing reckless driving, speeding and drunken driving.
'CRUCIAL NEED TO LOWER ROAD DEATHS'
Road safety could be one of the biggest threats to human lives today. This was the assessment made by Etienne Krug, director for the management of Non-communicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention at the World Health Organisation at the conference.
“A business-as-usual approach is not going to suffice. If we are to reach the goal of halving road deaths by 2020 we need to do more,” he said.
The world had, according to the Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015, using 2013 data, lost 1.25 million people on its roads. Krug pointed out that HIV and Aids claimed 1.6 million people in the same time period while TB accounted for 1.4 million losses. Malaria killed close to 800 000 people.
“Yet we still do not recognise the danger.”
In countries such as South Africa, development went hand in hand with improving road networks, but this should not necessarily have to translate into an increase in road fatalities.
He said changes needed to begin at country level in the form of good laws as well as law enforcement. Infrastructure such as speed bumps and other traffic measures were relatively cheap, but effective.
“The problem is that we plan transportation systems around cars, and not around pedestrians and cyclists, who are most vulnerable.”
UN Technical officer Tami Toroyan agreed with Krug, and said that half the world’s road users were pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, yet roads were not built with them in mind.
South African Margie Peden, the co-ordinator of Unintentional Injury Prevention at WHO, said the spate of deaths on roads could take its toll on the country’s economy since younger people (between the ages of 15 and 29) were often killed.
“These are the economically active people who are dying.”
She said road networks needed to be accommodating of human error.
“People make mistakes; it’s that simple. We also need to embrace a system that targets road users such as pedestrians and drivers, and start looking at the road system itself.”
Cape Argus / The Mercury