With the final road death tally now official and still no end in sight to the annual carnage, I would like to make a few simple suggestions.
40% of road deaths involve pedestrians. A good starting point would be to improve the visibility of our pedestrians by making it compulsory for all pedestrians walking on public roads to wear a high visibility vest. Such vests should be made available free of charge at any police station. Persons found to be not wearing a vest should be stopped and warned and given a vest to wear.
More pavements must be built and traffic police must ensure that pedestrians use them. This would also create jobs for rural communities.
Rural communities should be tasked with the temporary repair of potholes on rural gravel roads running through their communities. Rewards for these repairs could be channeled back to the communities through the local chiefs in the form of food vouchers that may be redeemed at local spaza shops.
With regards to road deaths outside of the pedestrians, the biggest cause is due to reckless driving. Reckless driving can be due to speeding, drinking, drug abuse, aggression and simply impatience. Whatever the cause the result is reckless driving. Traffic officials must be deployed onto the roads in unmarked vehicles to drive up and down a designated route. They must be tasked with prosecuting reckless drivers.
Things that they must look out for are overtaking on white lines, overtaking on the inside lane, driving in the emergency lane, overtaking on a blind rise, speeding and weaving in and out of traffic, maintaining following distance, un-roadworthy vehicles and road rage incidents amongst others.
These are a few simple ideas that will not be hard to implement. Please lets work hard to reduce the carnage in 2013.
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