Take action to stop road carnage
SOUTH Africans Against Drunk Driving (SADD) are absolutely horrified at the preliminary statistics of our atrocious Easter road traffic deaths.
A total of 235 people died, and the figure will increase as others die in hospital of their injuries, and more reports come in from outlying police stations.
In Ireland, they mourn 188 people dying annually!
There is a 51% increase in deaths (of people, proud South Africans who have died, not statistics).
In the Eastern Cape, the increase is 17%.
We don’t even know how many have been injured, but usually it is between 4 and10 times the number who have been killed, so that is about 940 to 2 350 injured people over Easter alone.
SADD would like to express our hope that this is escalated to a major story, as opposed to us being complacent about these very preventable deaths and injuries.
SADD has just won an international road safety award, and work with WHO, United Nations and the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety and Road Victims, who mandate us to not accept this carnage, and to get the media to assist to highlight this issue and to put pressure on the government to act appropriately.
By the Transport Department just enforcing seatbelt use in the back and front of vehicles, removing unroadworthy vehicles from the road, testing for alcohol use every day of the year and having traffic officers on duty 24 hours a day, we could easily achieve the Decade of Action goal of reducing the deaths by 50%.
I have driven for 45 years in South Africa and have never been breathalysed, yet two men who I trained at the Global Alliance of NGOs Conference in Malaysia recently, from Canada and Australia, had already been breathalysed twice this year alone.
No wonder alcohol use is behind at least 65% of the crashes. People drink and drive because they are seldom tested and think they can get away with it, but they kill and injure innocent people, or themselves.
Instead, our deaths are increasing by this amount. #BeOutragedByRoadCrashes. Please assist us to stop this carnage.
Caro Smith, SADD, Hilton