Closer to home, the statistics do offer some hope, however little. The Road Traffic Management Corporation reported in January that road death figures for December 2009 were 21% down compared with the same period the previous year. However, 1050 fatalities are still too many deaths and as the department has pointed out, road safety is everyone’s responsibility, so all South Africans have to play their part.

As part of the Municipality’s drive to support the Arrive Alive Campaign, we regularly include a few clips from our Inner-city Video Surveillance System. This system also allows us to identify problem areas and to take the necessary actions to improve the safety of Mbombela’s roads. We do however warn that some of the footage may be disturbing but also realise that it is better to be informed, cautious and able to look out for silly risks taken by other drivers on our roads (as seen in some of these clips).

At the recent road safety summit hosted by the Department of Transport, the departmental minister highlighted the critical situation of Africa’s roads, saying that Africa has the highest road death rate per population in the world – 32.2 people per 100 000 population are killed in road accidents. Africa’s road deaths were currently over 200 000 a year and were predicted to rise by at least 80% by 2020. He said that by 2015, road crashes would be the number one killer of children aged 5-14 in Africa, outstripping Malaria and HIV/AIDS. Road crashes were estimated to cost African countries between 1-3% of their Gross National Product (GNP)\.