IT helps curb road carnage

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 07 Jan 2008

IT has helped reduce the annual Christmas holiday road death toll, the Department of Transport says.

The department says 263 fewer people died on the country's roads in December than in the same month in 2006. January's figures are not yet available. Spokesman Collen Msibi says 1 465 people died on the roads in December 2006 compared to 1 202 last month - a decrease of 18%.

Transport minister Jeff Radebe last year put South Africa's annual road death toll at 15 000, with about 50 000 more injured and maimed. The cost to the economy of this carnage was estimated at R46 billion a year.

Msibi says more visible policing nationwide as well as the extensive network of marked and covert digital speed cameras in place along KwaZulu-Natal's roads made a discernable difference.

"Those [traps] are really helping us as a traffic calming system. It encourages good behaviour from motorists," he says. "We want to spread that system throughout the country."

But visible policing, including the use of laser speed measurement, also made a difference. "Research shows that police visibility makes a difference. It has a positive influence on driver behaviour for up to 17 minutes. With better visibility we can multiply those 17-minute intervals."

Msibi adds that the R51 million i-traffic CCTV system ringing Johannesburg played no discernable role in cutting the carnage in the province - although the toll fell from 316 to 237. This is because the Ben Schoeman highway and other major routes lined with cameras in the provinces were enjoying their annual quiet period.

However, he says, the system did help identify incidents faster and allowed the emergency services to respond quicker, "which must have helped save the lives of the injured".

Msibi says the system will again prove its worth from today. "It will help us manage the traffic as people go to work again," he says.

Alex van Niekerk, the SA National Road Agency's i-traffic project manager, adds that the project is a "longer term process rather than a quick fix and is part of a continuous process to improve the management, use and safety of the country's roads".