MEC NOMANDLA BLOEM

MEETING WITH TRAFFIC MANAGERS

24 JANUARY 2023

HORSE SHOE MOTEL: KIMBERLEY

Programme Director

HOD and HOM of DTSL

Traffic Station Managers

Senior Managers and staff from DTSL

We are gathered here today to reflect on our annual Festive Season operations as well as to consult on our upcoming Easter Operations. As we know, these operations form the decisive backbone of broader operations to keep roads and communities safe over festive periods.

In our country, we take these very seriously. It never means a simple desktop operation happens and officers are deployed randomly into the field. This operational plan must be informed by statistical analysis of trends of fatalities, fatal crashes, accident prone areas and routes, times, the conditions and driver behaviours that cause accidents and those factors regarding the roadworthiness of vehicles.

We firmly root our plan in National targets and focus areas and engage all stakeholders to the roads because we are literally dealing with life-death situations.

This right here, just this fact alone should be enough to demand from us our total commitment to our task at hand and a professional dedication to each play our role impeccably and procedurally correct.

At this point allow me to express my sorrow at those who have lost their lives on our roads over this period. May God be with their families and may their souls rest in peace. Added to this I already want to take the opportunity to thank all of you who have gone out in numbers to ensure we saturate routes and be blue beacons of safety along our roads.

As we all know, human factors remain a principle driver of fatalities on our roads nationwide, accounting for 87% of all crashes, followed by road and environmental factors at 8% with vehicle factors at 5%.

We have no doubt that road safety education and awareness remain critical in our efforts to arrest the carnage on our roads and prevent road crashes.  This is the case because when crashes occur, there is often more than one factor at play.  Ensuring that a vehicle has headlights, wipers, brakes and tyres in good condition, is important because of unpredictable weather patterns.   
 
Allow me to express my appreciation to our Road Safety and Law Enforcement personnel and organizations for their role in educational and awareness activations in the build-up and during the Festive Season.  

Our Festive Season period begun on 1 December 2022 and ended on 11 January 2023.  This is to ensure consistency in the way we measure progress and to find ways to improve our efforts in arresting road carnage.   

The Minister recently announced that over 370 joint operations were executed during the period under review, in line with the focus areas that were presented on 8 December 2022, that focused on pedestrian enforcement, vehicle road worthiness, public passenger transport, drunken driving, execution of warrants of arrest and speed law enforcement.  
 
Four hundred and seventy-four (474) K78 road blocks were affected during this period, with over 1.3 million vehicles stopped and checked. Over two hundred and fifty-five thousand (255 000) notices were issued during this period. 
   
Minister Mbalula announced that : The 2022/23 festive season recorded significant gains in our efforts to arrest road fatalities.  The period under review saw total of one thousand four hundred and fifty-one (1 451) people losing their lives on our roads.  This is a 13.9% reduction compared to one thousand six hundred and eighty-five (1 685) fatalities in the previous period.  
 
We also recorded a 6,5% reduction of fatal crashes compared to the previous year when we recorded one thousand two hundred and ninety-five (1 295) fatal crashes compared to one thousand two hundred and eleven (1 211) this year.  

The Northern Cape fatalities dropped from 65 to 51, resulting in a 21.5% reduction.

The Minister noted that road crash fatalities in 2021 led to a R188 billion economic loss and posed a huge burden to our economy. The loss to the country, the community and the immediate families is immeasurable. It is common knowledge that road crashes do not just happen, they happen because of certain contributory factors.

These contributory factors are real circumstantial elements that are present at the time of the crash. The most important of these relate to driver behaviour, driver attitude, self-discipline, and compliance with regulations.  
   
We must, moving forward, up the game in ensuring that the law bites and those who continue to undermine the law will face the full might of the law. Efforts to have visible policing at hazardous locations will continue to be a priority, especially at accident-prone times.  Eradicating corruption through the RTMC’s national anticorruption unit must remain a key priority.   

I am, then looking forward to our presentations and deliberations on how we can make our roads even safer during our festive period and right through the year, I want us to feel free and lift up our concerns but also solutions and build a new commitment moving ahead.

I thank you