Zimpapers Logo

WE are currently marking the Decade of Action for Road Safety, a period that seeks to decrease road traffic deaths by 50 percent by year 2020. This means that we have declared war on traffic accidents, but is this a battle we want to win or we will leave it to fate?

The figures released by the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe (TSCZ) managing director Mr Obio Chinyere in Harare early this week do not only make sad reading, but they also show that unless something miraculous happens on our roads, we will not achieve the 50 percent target by 2020. Figures don’t lie, because these are statistics of dearly departed family members of a larger family that makes up Zimbabwe.

Too many lives are being lost on our roads, lost needlessly for that matter. We already have a situation where far too many people are dying from natural causes, and we do not need road accidents to balloon the mortality rate figures.

No amount of explanation can justify the high figures recorded so far for the first half of the year. According to TSCZ, between January and July this year, 930 people perished on our roads countrywide, while 4 222 people were injured. These fatalities were recorded from a total 22 259 road traffic accidents during the period under review.

The full import of this grim picture of death, injuries, grief, psychological trauma, doom and gloom, and what lies ahead can be fully understood when one looks at the statistical data compiled by the Zimbabwe Republic Police National Traffic Section, for the period 2010 to 2016.

At the inception of the Decade of Action, 26 841 crashes were recorded in 2010; the total number of people killed was 1 796 while 14 336 were injured. By 2016, the figures had drastically risen to 38 606 crashes; 1 700 killed and 11 392 injured.

What it means, according to Mr Chinyere, is that between January and July this year, “an average of five people die in road traffic accidents every day and of these, 94 percent are a result of human error.”

The following factors have been cited for being the main causes of road traffic accidents by the TSCZ: speeding, misjudgment/inattention, overtaking errors, failure to give way, following too closely, reversing errors, obstruction on the road-way, tyre-bursts, negligent pedestrians/cyclists, animals and fatigue.

We have heard all this before, and concur with Mr Chinyere’s sentiments that its “disheartening to continue losing lives on the roads due to human error,” but how do we move from this level to the next where we decree and declare zero tolerance to negligent driving we witness on a daily basis, sloppy driving that is killing so many people?

How do we also move to a position where we won’t tolerate this foolish driving that has robbed families of their loved ones, while some children end up being raised by single parents, and in some cases we end up with child-headed family units as was the norm with the HIV and Aids pandemic?

How many people and resources should the nation lose before everyone, especially those behind the wheel say, enough is enough?

While we rejoice that thousands of people continue to have their own means of transport and/or have easy access to passenger vehicles to ferry them to different parts of the country, in most cases, these are short-lived celebrations. If the first half shows that five people died on our roads daily, we surely cannot say we are making progress.

We need a paradigm shift to tame the traffic jungle. There should also be a sense of responsibility among all travellers: drivers and passengers alike. Drivers cannot spend so many human hours learning how to drive, only to end up doing it recklessly and tragically. And, people cannot save thousands of dollars to buy their dream cars that will turn into killer machines.

Our legislators can enact one law after another and the police can man the roads 24/7 for the whole year, but if the sense of responsibility and respect for the sanctity of life is secondary, then the laws and the awareness campaigns will be meaningless. People must be accountable for their actions on the roads.