Do try to enjoy your holiday
Text: Ivo Vegter. Article from the December 2012 issue of Car Magazine.
Ivo Vegter is a columnist who in over 15 years of journalism has written about tanzanite, beef farming, microchip architecture, Austrian-school economics, species extinction, hit men, the history of computers, football, dye-sublimation printers, nuclear power stations, accounting rules, bat men living on the moon, global warming, several criminal CEOs and a king.
He is easily bored.
Don’t let the moralising road-safety nannies spoil your hard-earned break.
They’re always at you, aren’t they? Just as you’re trying to relax after the stressful work of another tough year by tackling the even more stressful job of bundling a boot full of gear and a back seat full of kids into the car for a long-awaited holiday you can’t really afford, there they are, coming at you from all sides.
The Arrive Alive campaign plasters images all over your breakfast newspaper and evening television depicting the bloody carnage of road accidents. It hopes to inflict fear and horror, apparently entirely oblivious to the disturbing effect this might have on the many South Africans living with post-traumatic stress disorder because of year-round crime, violence and, yes, road accidents.
Brand campaigns outdo each other trying to take the moral high ground with graphic road-safety sermons. Some, such as the infamous Brandhouse advertisements of a couple of years ago, go as far as crudely hinting at the hell that awaits you were you to get locked up for having a glass of wine too many during your Christmas lunch. They are entirely indifferent to the fact that prison rape is a serious violation of human rights, not an appropriate retribution for bad driving.
Government officials use language like “battle plan” and threaten that, if you were unlucky enough to cause an accident in which someone gets killed, having a death on your conscience isn’t torture enough. “The state shall pursue you legally and take you away from society because you pose a great danger,” they warned before this year’s Easter holiday.
Don’t get me wrong. Dangerous driving and unroadworthy vehicles aren’t to be taken lightly. They really do kill. That the government seeks to protect innocent road users from the reckless actions of a few is commendable, provided it uses means that are effective as well as fair to everyone else. That campaigners try to raise awareness about road rules and road safety is equally commendable.
But why go to such lengths to terrorise the motoring public, just when people are trying to take a break from the daily stress of life? Do they think Christmas and Easter are the only times when people drive carelessly and have accidents?
The data suggests otherwise. Let’s consider the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) data for the number of fatal accidents and number of fatalities, per month, between April 2009 and March 2011 (the most recent data that appears to be available). For comparison purposes, I have split the data into two year-long periods.
We should be acutely aware of road safety year-round
Remarkably, for all the big talk, Easter doesn’t even show up in the road-accident statistics. April is a perfectly average month compared with the rest of the year.
The mid-year holiday does peak slightly above average every year and the end-of-year holiday goes a little higher still. Each December accounts for about 10 per cent of the year’s fatal road accidents and fatalities. By contrast, January is usually a very safe month. However, these are moderate spikes when seen in context. It seldom swings more than 20 per cent up or down from the year’s average.
So, there’s a pattern in the data, but it isn’t very pronounced. Meanwhile, the RTMC reports that, on most of its major indicators, the statistics show improvement. Fatal crashes and actual fatalities are both down, even before you factor in the growing number of vehicles on the road. So are unlicensed vehicle numbers.
South Africa counts 208 deaths per 100 000 vehicles on the road, compared with a world average of 93. This is high by rich-world standards, but Zimbabwe is at 259, Botswana at 299 and India at 315. Nigeria’s 1 042 and Kenya’s 1 638 deaths per 100 000 cars both sound terrible, but they’re still nowhere near the worst in the world. Those dubious honours go to Liberia, Ethiopia and Togo, which each clock up a staggering 10 000 deaths per 100 000 vehicles a year.
We should be acutely aware of road safety, but we really ought to be aware of it year-round. Some months are a little better than others, and some months a little worse, but there is never a time when South Africans are safe on the road.
There is, however, a better time to stress about it than when you’re trying to rest from a year’s hard labour. The road-safety nannies will insist on shoving gory pictures, horror numbers and endless police stops in your face, but don’t let them get to you.
Take it easy on the road. Enjoy both your holiday and the motoring it takes to get you there.
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