The carnage must end

FRIDAY was a particularly bad day on South African roads – the butcher’s bill was harrowing; 18 children and two adults in one accident on the border of Gauteng and Mpumalanga.

In the Free State that same day, one of South Africa’s best known boxing trainers perished when his motorcycle was involved in a collision with another vehicle.

Ironically earlier that day Transport Minister Joe Maswanganyi held a press conference to announce that the Easter death toll had spiked by 51 percent; pushing the number of fatalities year-on-year from 156 to 235. When will it end? We have almost become inured to the carnage on our roads – unless we are the parents or the children, the cousins or the nephews, nieces, of someone who has perished. It shouldn’t be like that.

We have all the laws we need, we don’t need more. We have enough traffic officers, enough police officers. Our rescue and emergency medical skills, particularly at peak traffic periods, are among the best in the world. Our fatalities though are among the worst. In truth though, even one death is one too many.

We need consistency in applying the laws we have. We need consistency in the punishment of delinquent drivers – whether they were speeding, driving without licences, overtaking on blind rises, driving drunk.

We need consistency on the roadworthiness of vehicles we allow on our roads. The reality is that there are far too many vehicles that should have been consigned to the scrapheap a decade ago, but are still on the road. The worst are buses, jammed with passengers and held together with baling wire, driven by drivers who have either bought their licences or dispensed with the formality altogether.

But we are all guilty, especially those in high performance, late model luxury vehicles who behave as if the rules of the road are for everyone else, not them.

This weekend, many will be taking to the road again, there’s only one way to make a difference – for each of us to take responsibility and think of others on the road, all the time. The carnage must end.