Political visibility campaigns – or performance art – do little to address South Africa’s deteriorating road safety.
While it surely is the season to be jolly, it’s not only the shop assistants who will be rushed off their feet this December and January… cops, emergency services personnel, doctors and nurses – and undertakers – will all be putting in long hours to deal with the consequences of reckless behaviour on our roads.
It is disturbing that, according to N3 Toll Concession (N3TC) – operators of the highway between Gauteng and Durban – there has been a marked increase in single-vehicle accidents on the road.
Last December, 53.5% of all crashes involved only one vehicle but in the first 11 months of this year, this figure has risen to 60.4%.
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That’s a clear sign that drivers – and we already have some of the worst in the world – are becoming even more incompetent and careless.
Of course, just as Santa Claus appears around this time draped in his red costume so, too, do our politicians emerge from hibernation to don their high-visibility Dayglo bibs and pose for photos and videos, normally surrounded by scores of vehicles and officials who could certainly be better employed policing moving violations.
This is political performance art and has little to no impact on road safety.
