Faizel Patel – 09/04/2021
A consultant at Priceless-SA at the School of Public Health at Wits says South Africa has been ranked the lowest out of fifty-six countries in a survey which claimes to have identified the world’s most safest and dangerous roads.
Dr Lee Randall was speaking to Radio Islam about the survey, which she says it flawed because there are over two hundred countries in the world.
Transport minister Fikile Mbalula on Thursday announced that according to the preliminary figures, 189 crashes were recorded over the Easter Weekend, resulting in 235 fatalities nationwide.
The country’s deteriorating road infrastructure have constantly been blamed for the high death toll in daily accidents, but more specifically during times such as the Easter weekend and the end-of-the-year festive season.
Dr Randall says there is some merit in South Africa being ranked at the bottom of the class.
“Because the survey was so unrepresentative, it can’t be accepted that we are truly bottom of the class. Virtually the whole of Africa was omitted from this survey along with all low income countries.”
However, Dr Randall says South Africa does have a very distinct road safety problem.
“Our levels of crashes, injuries and life changing disabilities on our roads is horrendous. We have a very distinct problem. The number of people who die on our roads out of every hundreds thousand deaths is fire higher than the world average of 18. In our cases it’s as many as 26, where as in aspirational countries such as Sweden and Australia, the number is below five.”
Dr Randall says as road users, South Africans must have some of sort of “inner traffic cop” operating all the time and ethically guiding us as to how we should behave on the road where we are drivers or pedestrians.
Listen to the interview with Dr Lee Randall
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