‘Men to blame’ for most road deaths
THE latest road fatality statistics showed nearly 80% of the deaths could be attributed to “stubborn and chauvinistic” male attitudes.
This was said yesterday by Transport Minister Dipuo Peters who delivered a progress report in Midrand on the state of the Festive Season Road Safety Campaign, which was launched at the beginning of the month.
She also revealed that between December 1 and 19‚ there had been 845 road fatalities‚ an increase of 17% over the same period last year.
Peters said she would urgently convene a meeting with all traffic chiefs and regional directors of provinces with high fatalities to discuss the situation.
She said drunken driving remained one of the chief contributing factors to accidents.
“We are seeking to reclassify drunken driving from Schedule 3 to a more severe Schedule 5 offence, to ensure those who negligently cause crashes on the roads do not get bail easily and spend time behind bars‚” Peters said.
The department would also seek the introduction of minimum sentences for negligent and reckless driving.
Peters said: “We claim no easy victories and we tell no lies in confronting the scourge of road carnage underpinned by lawlessness and a recalcitrant attitude of some of our road users.
“We have to do everything in our might to deal with the stubborn and chauvinistic male attitude as they account for 77.4% of fatalities and 89.4% being black.”
She said a worrying behavioural pattern that continued unabated was the tendency to ignore the call for road safety by road users.
“We have equally noticed a disturbing trend relating to female road user behaviour,” Peters said.
“Females account for 21.2% of the fatalities [and] we have to deal decisively with this unfortunate trend.”