EDITORIAL: Corruption part of road carnage
Corruption is a big part of why we have so many drivers who don’t know how to drive, because they have licences they bought rather than earned
Whatever the government is doing about road deaths clearly isn’t working. Each festive season is followed by collective despair at the carnage on the roads and this year’s death toll is particularly horrendous, at 1,714. This is up 5% compared to the December/January period last year, with an increase of 31% in the worst-hit province, Limpopo. Nor is this the end of it — those who die of their injuries within 30 days are also counted, so the toll will rise. Some of the breakdowns produce even more tragic numbers — 34% of those who die are pedestrians, many of them children, and 40% are passengers — so drivers who cause the accidents are least likely to die. As it is, SA has some of the worst road death rates anywhere. Although the total number of deaths each year, at almost 13,000, has come down from a peak of 15,000 in 2006, the death rate is still 26 per 100,000 of the population. That is four times higher than the average for the countries in the International Road Traffic Accide...
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