Pretoria – Transport Minister Dipuo Peters has expressed her condolences to the families and friends of those who died as a result of a spate of crashes on the countries roads at the weekend.
She wished those in hospital a speedy recovery.
In one of the incidences, on 9 September 2016 on the P68 near R612, Highflats in KwaZulu-Natal, a Chrysler and an Isuzu LDV type vehicle were involved in an accident.
Seven people died and four people were injured and rushed to the nearest hospital.
“Although the precise cause of this crash is still under investigation, most of these crashes are characterised by speeding, overtaking in the face of oncoming traffic, hit and run and driving under the influence of alcohol and not wearing seat belts.
“We declared that ‘road safety is everyone’s responsibility’, whether you are a vehicle driver, passenger and pedestrian, our law enforcement officers are directed always to be on high alert, to be visible and to patrol all known hazardous areas,” Minister Peters said.
She reiterated that road safety requires commitment and dedication from everyone to move South Africa forward to a safer future.
Government, through law enforcement agencies, will continue to ensure that we get rid of those who continue to cause unnecessary pain to families and hurt the South African economy.
The Minister said most of people who get involved in the majority of these crashes are young people, who are bread winners in their families and who are still economically active.
Government is in the final stages of finalising the National Road Safety Strategy, which clearly articulates a road safety plan to fight the scourge of road fatalities.
“On the legislative side, our intention to introduce AARTO is to address this situation by encouraging responsible driving habits and adherence to traffic laws amongst the motoring public.
“AARTO is a system to deal with offenders who break the rules of the road. The main reasons for the system are to encourage compliance and allocate demerit points to traffic offenders.
“The intention is to reduce road crashes and, thus making the country’s roads safer,” said Minister Peters.
The AARTO system will classify traffic violations as infringements and offences, operate a uniform penalty system for traffic infringements and provide traffic offenders with an administrative process to deal with traffic infringements.
The Department of Transport, through all its road entities, is determined to reduce this unacceptably high number of crashes and deaths on our roads.
“Every province has put in place plans to ensure that we achieve a 50% reduction in fatalities and crashes based on last year’s figures.”
