Cape Town - A day before the world remembered traffic victims on the weekend three children aged 4, 5 and 18 months lost their lives when a car they were travelling in veered off the road on Bainskloof Pass in Wellington.
The 60-year-old driver was injured.
These victims add to the 1 163 road users who died in the province from January 1 to November 17 this year. Of these, 617 were pedestrians, 248 passengers, 221 drivers, 49 motorcyclists, and 13 cyclists.
The highest number of pedestrian deaths was reported in the metro area with 680 fatalities recorded. The number of pedestrians, drivers and passenger deaths recorded during the same period last year was 882.
South Africans Against Drunk Driving (Sadd) founder and director Caro Smit said drunk driving remained the leading cause of road fatalities at 58%.
She said drunk driving was not seen as the violent and preventable crime it was, adding that the organisation would proactively continue to stop the easy sale of alcohol at petrol stations.
Smit said it was clear that restrictions on alcohol sales, as seen during the Covid-19 lockdown, led to a decline in the number of trauma incidents and that more needed to be done to promote the rights of all road users and bring down alcohol abuse, crashes and drink driving rates.
“In South Africa, we loose about 14 000 people every single year and hundreds of thousands get injured. Many of these victims and their families are further pushed in poverty.
“We could change road safety and bring down these fatalities by 50% if we can use evidence-based practices through reducing speeds. Road victims in South Africa have few rights, yet they are victims of crime,” she said.
ChildSafe director Thilda Nel said road crashes in South Africa were the second leading cause of death for children aged 5-14 years.
Nel said statistics showed child pedestrians and child passengers were particularly vulnerable, making up 62% and 36% of child road fatalities respectively.
Nel called for a reduction in the speed limit from 60km/to 30km/h in urban areas. She said this was particularly important to be implemented outside schools.
Nel said stricter enforcement of legislation making child car restraints and seats compulsory was also important to counter child deaths.
Department of Transport and Public Works spokesperson Jandré Bakker said for a significant portion of the year when the roads usually experienced high traffic volumes, there were lower volumes due to the lockdown and other restrictions.
Bakker said the likelihood of crashes increased as traffic volumes increased.
Bakker said in addition to traffic law enforcement, road safety education was key. The Traffic Management Chief Directorate has been taking an integrated approach to lower road fatalities, he said.