DAVID FURLONGER: Why SA has the world’s worst road death rates

Freedom beckons. Have you started counting down the days yet? In just under five weeks — on December 15 — most industries will close for the holidays and we’ll all be freeeeeeeeeeeee! Many of us will drive to the coast or the bush or the mountains for a well-earned family break. Many more will stay home and enjoy Christmas (or whatever else we celebrate) with a braai and a few drinks.

Matrics are likely to head off earlier, for the traditional party weekends.

It’s a time to make memories. The question is: will you live long enough to remember them?

I don’t wish to be maudlin, but we are heading into the most dangerous time of the year on South African roads. Every day of the year is dangerous — South Africa has one of the world’s worst road death rates — but the summer holidays are peak time.

We all think bad accidents happen to other people; that we’re immune because we are careful drivers. Perhaps you are careful, but the oncoming speeding moron isn’t. Neither is the impatient idiot behind you who suddenly overtakes and swings in front of you, forcing you and the cars behind to jam on your brakes.

A daily crawling commute to and from work on your own does not prepare you for a five-hour sprint to Durban with a boisterous family on board — and certainly not for a 14-hour trek to Cape Town. I remember once, on a particularly hot summer’s day in the southern Free State, pulling alongside a slowing car, to find four members of a family all fast asleep — including the father, who was driving. It took several seconds of me hooting the horn, and my wife shouting from the passenger seat, to wake him.

“I can’t believe it,” he said after we helped him pull off the road. “I’m such a careful driver.”

I can’t be smug. A few years ago, on my way through the Eastern Cape to rejoin the family Christmas holiday after being unexpectedly recalled to Joburg, I was unprepared for a kudu that suddenly ran from the dense roadside bush. I swerved to avoid it but, on the narrow road, the manoeuvre took me, end over end, straight into a field. My vehicle was a write-off and I ended up in the nearby Bedford cottage hospital. The kudu, you’ll be pleased to know, was unhurt.

It’s not just drivers who have to prepare for the holidays. Many accidents are caused by faulty vehicle mechanics and old tyres. They may be OK in stop-start city traffic, but at 140km/h in a line of traffic?

According to the Road Traffic Management Corp (RTMC), 12,545 people died in road accidents in South Africa last year. That was 25.8% more than 2020 and 0.3% more than 2019, though both comparisons should be taken with a pinch of salt, given the different lockdown levels in 2020 and 2021.

About 40% of those who died last year were pedestrians. That’s almost twice the 23% international rate of pedestrian deaths, as calculated by the World Health Organisation. Of South Africa’s dead, about 75% were men, 38% were people aged 25-35 and a dreadful 17% were children aged four or younger.

Over the 2021-2022 summer holiday, 1,685 people lost their lives — 14% more than a year earlier.

Weekends, not surprisingly, are the worst time for accidents throughout the year. According to the RTMC, 45.3% of 2021 fatal crashes happened on Saturdays and Sundays.

Alcohol, inevitably, is a major factor in South Africa’s deadly driving culture. Among 56 countries surveyed early this year by Zutobi, a UK driver education company, South Africa was ranked as the most dangerous in which to drive — the second consecutive year it has held the unwanted title.

The ranking is based, among other things, on road deaths per 1,000 population, the frequency of seat belt use, and the proportion of alcohol-related deaths.

South Africa’s seat belt record is one of the worst, but its booze death record leaves everyone in the shade. The incidence of alcohol-related deaths is 50% more than the second-placed country, and 10 times that of several others.

South Africa isn’t just bottom of the Zutobi ranking, it’s out on its own for awfulness. Scored overall out of 10, Norway is top with 8.21. The next 54 countries trickle down in fractions to Thailand, on 4.35, then there’s the biggest gap of all, to South Africa on 3.23.

Of course this isn’t a definitive ranking; most of the world’s countries were not assessed. Even so, there’s no denying the view of Hugo du Preez, short-term technical operations manager at financial services company PPS, who says: “We have an appalling driving culture. Our roads have many drivers who exceed the speed limit excessively, text while driving, drive under the influence of alcohol, and generally have little regard for the rules of the road. Combining all of these factors and the road conditions together, the risk of disaster on the roads becomes greater.”

Young people are particularly at risk during the coming festive season, he says. He quotes the Arrive Alive campaign, which says young drivers are 20 times more likely than their elders to cause accidents through drunk driving or speeding.

With the confidence of youth, not only do they think they are better drivers than they are, but also that they can “run rings around” insurance companies and accident assessors after they have crashed.

In January this year, after the holidays were over, transport minister Fikile Mbalula boasted that police had set up 651 roadblocks around the country during the period and issued 264,290 fines for various traffic offences.

Surprisingly, only 1,500 motorists were arrested for drunk driving — unquestionably a tiny proportion of the drunks on the road.

Under its national road safety strategy, the RTMC says the government has committed to halving the number of road deaths by 2030, compared to the 13,967 recorded in 2010. That means fewer than 7,000. The signs are not good.