09 October 2024
Lebohang Tsotetsi, Insurance Risks Manager at The South African Insurance Association (SAIA)
Lebohang Tsotetsi
Building resilient drivers through continuous education, and 24/7 tougher law enforcement are key focus areas in South Africa’s ongoing battle against road traffic accidents and fatalities; but they are by no means the only interventions required to reduce the annual death toll.
There is a clear and necessary call for all road users to be accountable for their actions and treat the country’s road traffic laws and enforcement institutions with respect. “Driver and pedestrian behaviours such as driving under the influence, jaywalking, distracted driving, recklessness, and speeding are among the main contributors to South Africa’s annual motor vehicle accident fatality statistics; these human behaviours including various socio-psychological, socio economic and health factors, are also among the most difficult to influence or change,” said Dr Karien Venter, Senior Researcher at CSIR Smart Mobility, who was one of the keynote speakers at a multi-stakeholder panel assembled for the BRS “State of Driver Behaviour Webinar, held on 26 September 2024.
The BRS Forum was established by various trade associations within the transport ecosystem in 2014 and tasked with exploring sustainable ways to reduce road crashes and fatalities in the country – in recognition of South Africa’s commitment to the United Nations (UN) Decade of Action and implementation of the National Road Safety Strategy aimed at reducing road crashes and fatalities by half (50%) by 2030 from the 2010 baseline of 13,967 fatalities.
The assembled experts agreed that combatting road fatalities required instilling the correct road user behaviour from an early age, but that a 24/7, 365 days increased, and sustained law enforcement effort were equally needed to address this. To change driver behaviour, more needs to be done in addition to the seasonal campaigns that only target peak driving seasons. They argued that in the absence of consequences for poor driver behaviour, road users tended to resist change. Therefore, strengthening a joint workforce to address road safety would have better impact in achieving South Africa’s road safety targets.
Reflecting on South Africa’s road safety situation and success stories from countries like Australia’s efforts to reduce road crashes and fatalities, Dr Narainsamy, Sustainability & Responsibility Manager for Africa & Middle East for Pernod Ricard, voiced out the need for a collaborative drive to assist law enforcement to prevent motorists from driving under the influence, by encouraging them to make use of e-hailing services after social drinking. Mr Layton Beard, Head: Public Affairs and International Relations at the Automobile Association of South Africa (AA), further suggested to get tough on crime by ensuring that forensic laboratories process samples quicker, to allow for enforcement agencies to do their work – and for the courts to ensure that people who transgress the law are brought to book.
Another silent rising impact on road accidents and fatalities, is driver health and fatigue within the logistics and e-logistic transportation industries and long-distance drivers. According to Mr Pravin Sunderlall – Road Incident Manager at the N3 Toll Concession, there is a notable increase in human error in vehicle accidents and fatalities observed throughout the N3 Toll concession’s road network. When following through on some cases, drivers drove long hours, with little to no rest, or had various underlying health issues that impacted their awareness and judgment on the road.
Dovetailing on the difficulties of influencing and bringing upon change; the panellists raised concerns over the impunity in which South African road users interacted with existing road traffic laws, citing the common practise of ‘buying’ drivers’ licences as one example. The panel also flagged significant education and experience shortfalls in the novice driver population, exacerbated by systemic problems in the issuing of both learners’ and drivers’ licences. Mr Lazarus Mokwena, Secretary General for the National Driving School Association of South Africa (NDSASA) suggested a rethink of the transition from learner to driver, saying that the current system does not allow adequate time for skills development. “The system is failing the driver school industry in a sense that a person comes into the system for a learner’s licence today, and tomorrow, the same person is on the system looking for a driver’s licence,” Mokwena said.
The various road transport agencies across South Africa have been hard at work to continuously improve road safety outcomes across the country including the implementation of the National Road Safety Strategy, spearheaded by the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), which largely focuses on road traffic management and law enforcement. The RTMC conducts national road safety audits and ensures that implemented road safety initiatives are built into the National Development Plan as part of delivering on UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) 3 and 11.
Ms Ntsoaki Tsokolibane, Head: Road Safety at the RTMC, called for “holistic interventions” that include addressing society’s alarmingly lax attitude towards the law, alluding to the lack of accountability to road infringements enforced on road users. In support, Dr Venter also singled out compliance as a major issue, conceding that, “One of the biggest problems that we currently face is that enforcement is not followed through to bring people to task for the behaviour they choose to execute.” In light of this hope that the implementation of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act (AARTO) will be instrumental in driving change, despite various public concerns raised pertaining to public administrative challenges. Advocate Mncedisi Bilikwana pointed out that the Demerit Points System and planned driver rehabilitation programmes could potentially contribute to changing negative driver behaviours and addressing the socio-psychological factors affecting offenders.
The closing tone of the webinar echoed the need for all attendees representing mostly private and a few public sector entities within the transport sector, to consider road safety as a “shared responsibility” that should be tackled in collaboration. At a higher level, this might require a refinement of current approaches to both private and public sector transportation, where safe mobility should be the primary goal, supported by continuous driver training, including impactful educational and awareness campaigns that run throughout the year. This should then be monitored and evaluated against national and global road safety key performance indicators.
The BRS chairperson and General Manager for Insurance Risks at SAIA, Ms Pamela Ramagaga called on all South Africans, the private and public sector to collaborate and work together sustainably and systematically to improve road use outcomes. “If we work together, we can shift the needle in terms of what we see on our roads and help our government to achieve the Decade of Action goal,” she said.
Panel moderator, Eugene Herbert, closed the session with the ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ quotation often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. “We cannot expect government to rein in road fatalities on their own; road safety falls upon all road users who must take responsibility for their actions,” Herbert concluded.
This article was originally published by a www.fanews.co.za . Read the Original article here. .