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While everyone agrees that there was significantly more traffic on the roads in the just finished festive season, the number of accidents fell very slightly, suggesting that the better roads as the Government continues to upgrade highways and side roads and some greater care by drivers had a result.

But more needs to be done, both by the law enforcement authorities and by drivers themselves.

Police statistics show that there were 2 723 road accidents between mid-December and mid this month, the traditional festive season. 

This was marginally below the 2 741 in the same 31 days in the previous festive season, despite the higher number of vehicles and trips.

But the just-finished season saw 148 deaths and 669 injuries compared to 138 deaths and 647 injuries in the previous festive season, despite the fall in the total number of accidents.

And we need to remember that this death and injury toll was not inflated by some national disaster involving a bus plunging off a bridge or colliding head on. 

In fact during that festive season period there were no bus accidents, although there was one the day after, but that was a high-speed rear end shunt that killed one, rather than wiping out most of the passengers.

So more people were dying in each batch of 100 accidents, and those statistics tell us that an average just under 4,8 people were dying every day; if that was some disease doing the killing there would be a health emergency declared, mass vaccinations ordered and a general mobilisation of health resources. 

Even the almost 88 accidents a day are a lot, and almost every one of those accidents was the result of some driver making an error, that is driving badly, driving negligently or driving recklessly rather than a fault in the vehicle. 

Most vehicle faults simply result in a car or truck parked on the side of the road because it will not go.

This is why we need to get drivers to understand that they are in control of a potentially dangerous piece of machinery and that if they make a mistake someone can die. And while we have some very sound laws and rules of the road it is obvious that a lot of our drivers do not obey them.

Traffic safety experts list speeding, driving above the limit set for alcohol blood levels, risky overtaking and failure to stop when required as the biggest causes of accidents and road deaths.

All these rules can be enforced although the police will need some extra equipment.

Speeding makes two contributions to the accident and death statistics.

First a car travelling faster than what the experts reckon is the safe maximum, the one set in the speed limit, is more likely to be involved in an accident.

The driver could lose control, or be unable to stop or slow down enough in time if some unexpected event happens, like a child or a cow crossing the road.

The second contribution is that a speeding vehicle will cause a lot more damage if it does hit something than one travelling at a safe speed.

We are supposed to apply our formal education, and we all learned in school that energy, and thus forces in a collision, are in proportion to square of the speed.

So if we double our speed we quadruple the forces in a crash. One oddity about speeding is the fact that it is one of the few crimes that decent, respectable people boast about committing. 

We have all heard drivers, generally men in this case although some women like to boast how fast they drive, telling us how fast their modern high-powered car can travel when they push the pedal flat, and how much they enjoy speeding.

Some even try and justify this, claiming, wrongly, that it is safe.

The problem is likely to worsen on both national highways, city roads and rural side roads as the Government continues its highly desirable road maintenance and road upgrade programmes. The main reasons, the only reasons, for these programmes is to make traffic flow better, flow more easily and flow more safely.

It is not to open opportunities for someone to speed, or try and break the Harare-Masvingo-Beitbridge record because the road is becoming a high-class decent highway.

So regrettably we need speed traps, in cities and towns as well as on national highways.

Some can be manned although many countries are not installing continuous automatic speed traps to combat the menace. 

We do not need that corrupt system in place before the Second Republic, and even if the offenders were made to go to the nearest police station to pay a fine, even the very rich and important would be hit by the that delay, although they might feel the fine is desultory. 

The other big problem is drinking and driving.

We have very good laws. A first offender caught with a blood alcohol level greater than 0,07 percent, roughly one drink for a small person and perhaps two for a very large person, loses their licence for a year. 

There is also a fine, but the licence loss is the big penalty. But no one has been before a magistrate on this offence for decades, although anyone on Harare roads late on a Friday night will see scores of probable offenders.

Breathalyser technology is continuously improving and the costs falling, and while a confirming blood test is also required the initial test is good enough to spark off the blood test.

While the costs of speed traps and breathalysers should be budgeted as life-savers, like vaccines, at least in the beginning the fines from catching the criminals would cover any conceivable budget, although we would all hope that people would get the message and stop breaking the law and dry up that source of revenue.

Bad overtaking, and we saw this in the festive season with the number of head-on collisions, is due to extreme impatience by drivers. 

No one likes being trapped behind a slower vehicle, but that is something we must accept and put up with, rather than kill ourselves and the perfectly innocent people in the oncoming vehicle. 

This is harder to enforce, although controlling breaches of speed limits will help reduce overtaking and create more gaps in the oncoming flow.

We all know about people refusing to stop at Stop signs and red lights.

We see it every day and especially every night.

Again technology can help, the cameras built into traffic lights. 

Again we do not need to use these as a revenue collector, but we do need to enforce adherence, perhaps using the courts more.

What the latest statistics show is that better roads, and better cars, are desirable and are needed, but that they must be accompanied by better drivers, or at least drivers more willing to obey the rules and regulations.

And regrettably this means we need to make sure they do, by catching and punishing those who do not and who cause most of the accidents and deaths on our roads.