Every bit helps in making roads safer

Those of you old enough to have gone to high school around the 1980s will remember a driver training programme schools had in conjunction with Volkswagen.

The manufacturer provided blue CitiGolfs to high schools which were utilised to teach scholars – called learners nowadays – how to drive. All in a controlled environment – mostly the schoolyard – of course, with older children already possessing learner’s licences guided by willing teachers.

Apart from the obvious benefits for both the manufacturer and the education system, the arrangement actually contributed greatly to overall safer roads. Many school children come from households without cars and I’d be surprised if they inspire to make use of public transport for the rest of their lives. But even for those who might never own a car in their lifetime, learning to drive is a valuable life skill nonetheless. Besides the actual mechanics of where to press and what to turn, exposure to driving and what a car is capable of give you a far greater appreciation and sense of road safety. And road safety is something this country can greatly improve on.

The death toll on our road every season is nothing short of shocking and what’s worse is that it’s not attributed to one single factor. Had it been, it would have been far easier to address anyway. But as it currently stands, general lawlessness, drunken driving, speeding, vehicles in bad shape and uneducated pedestrians all combine every few months or so to give us another inflated fatality figure that could have been largely avoided if everyone involved were better educated.

If you take the number of high schools in South Africa these days into account, it would be unfair to expect any manufacturers to hand cars out left, right and centre. Cars are expensive and learner drivers can be pretty severe on it’s components. And a very large percentage of government schools in this country also have much bigger and more basic issues to deal with than teaching kids how to drive.

But in a perfect world, something this country was very far from in the 1980s, where budget isn’t an issue, teaching kids proper road safety in primary schools and having to drive in high schools go a long way to making roads safer.

By the way, when I started my high school career in 1990 the CitiGolf programme had just stopped, but the jokes were still going strong. It was rumoured that the principal abused the Golf for his own personal use and only pulled his pristine Honda Prelude out of the garage on Sunday mornings. And then still managed to smash it on his way to church.