EDITOR'S NOTE
Don’t blame everyone else for poor road safety
Tackling dismal road-death record starts with the right attitude behind the wheel
The Easter holidays always make for grim news reading in terms of road safety. SA has one of the poorest road safety records, and a report by the World Health Organisation stated we have about 25.9 fatalities per 100,000 people, compared with Europe at 9.3 per 100,000. Deaths on SA roads rose increased 14% during the last Easter holidays when 510 people were killed compared with 449 the previous year. Our default response to road death statistics is to blame the government for the carnage, and there is certainly a lot to be done, not the least of which is shifting its focus from income gathering to actual road safety. It is less common for us to be self-reflective, and in our self-righteous finger pointing at what road-safety authorities are not doing or how dangerously minibus taxis are driven, we tend to overlook our own personal roles in helping making roads safer. Addressing SA’s dismal road-death record starts with the right attitude behind the wheel. For instance, do we always...
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