MURRAY WILLIAMS
Staff Writer
The scores of Cape Town drivers who neglect to strap their children in – and even allow them to stand on front seats – could be arrested and criminally charged.
Transport MEC Robin Carlisle wants prosecutors to crack down on parents and other drivers who “fail to protect children” by buckling them up as the law requires.
Following taxi driver Jacob Humphreys’s conviction and sentence of 30 years for murder – after 10 schoolchildren were killed in his taxi when it was hit by a train at the Buttskop level crossing in Blackheath in 2010 – Carlisle has asked his legal team to investigate the precedent in relation to the widespread failure to strap in children.
Carlisle said: “We have been emboldened by the Humphreys verdict, and believe extremely strongly that the legal concept of ‘criminal negligence’ should be considered by prosecutors in every possible relevant case, when bringing drivers to book.
“Drivers – and this includes parents – who are criminally negligent with regard to their children must understand that they could the full force of criminal law,” Carlisle said.
“More children are dying prematurely in car accidents than from any other cause. Do parents leave their sanity behind when they climb into a car with their kids?
“Between 200 and 300 children are treated each year at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital for serious injuries sustained in crashes – and over 80 percent were not restrained in any way. It shows how absolutely clueless SA drivers are.
“If they had any idea of what happens in an accident – about the horror that goes on inside and eventually outside their cars – they would never do that.”
Legal sources canvassed by the Cape Argus, including within the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), confirmed that Carlisle’s plan was possible within current legislation.
Carlisle is now planning to request that the NPA takes several hard measures.
l First, parents caught endangering their children typically face fines only. But Carlisle will now request the NPA to ask its prosecutors at courts around the province to no longer offer admission of guilt fines only. Instead, prosecutors are to demand that parents and other drivers appear in court.
In cases where the state could prove severe negligence – like allowing a child to stand on a front seat on a highway, for example – the parent or driver could still only receive a fine, but could then carry a criminal record thereafter.
l Second, in cases in which children who were not strapped in are killed or seriously injured, the actual traffic violation of not buckling a child in would become incidental. Instead, a parent or driver could be charged with one of several criminal charges: “Reckless or Negligent Driving”, “Culpable Homicide” or even – in particularly egregious cases – “Murder”.
In such a matter, prosecutors could argue that a parent’s or a driver’s “negligent behaviour” – with a clear possible consequence – led directly to a child’s death. In Humphreys’s conviction, it was proven that he ignored warning signals, a lowered boom and overtook a row of cars.
Western Cape High Court Judge Robert Henney sentenced Humphreys to serve 30 years in jail. He sentenced him to 12 years for each murder, but ordered that the sentences run concurrently. Humphreys also got six years for each count of attempted murder.
Judge Henney ordered four years of each of these sentences to run concurrently with the murder sentence.
carlisle’s bid for tougher legal action has the support of the City of Cape Town’s JP Smith, Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, who said: “I think the state should be acting in exactly this way, where there is clear evidence of negligence.”
Smith confirmed footage from CCTV cameras around the city was being studied regularly for traffic offences – and that this included incidents in which children were transported without safety belts.
In December, Professor Sebastian van As, the head of the trauma unit at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital and the president of Childsafe SA, said road accidents remained the top non-natural killer of children in SA.
Annually the hospital treated close to 300 children who were involved in motor vehicle accidents as passengers. Nearly 90 percent of those children were not strapped in properly.
There were no statistics for child road deaths in the Western Cape, but Van As said about 8 000 children died nationally each year.
Arrive Alive spokesman Ashref Ismail said: “Seatbelts are absolutely vital. Research locally and internationally has proven conclusively that if we can get the seatbelt-wearing rate up from the dismally low 60-65 percent for front seat occupants, and appalling percentage for the rear seats – less than 1 percent – and get it up to 80 percent, front and rear, there is an automatic guaranteed 30 percent reduction in fatalities.”
Carlisle and Health MEC Theuns Botha said in a joint statement: “It is a well-known fact that the chance of survival in a collision increases dramatically for an adult or child using a seat belt or child restraint.
“Seatbelts and child restraints protect against ejection. One study found that 75 percent of all ejected vehicle occupants in a crash die as a result.”