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A lot of people from today will be driving to be with friends and relatives over the holiday weekends and numbers are likely to be higher this year because it is easier for many outside the banks and retail trade to take time off work with just four working days between today and January 3. And unless a lot more people than usual are willing to drive carefully and safely there is likely to be a record number of fatal accidents reflecting the rise in car ownership. Several families will celebrate Christmas at a cemetery.

These deaths will be, as usual, quite unnecessary. Too many drivers speed; too many drive home from parties drunk or half drunk, with some drinking while they drive; too many talk on mobile phones while driving, although statistics now prove that this is as dangerous as driving while drunk; too many drive while exhausted, refusing to rest and too many treat Stop signs, red lights and Give Way signs as options instead of commands.

It is this bad driving that kills and if it only killed the bad drivers it might not be so dreadful. The true horror is that bad drivers kill others: people in their vehicle, drivers and passengers in other vehicles, pedestrians and people just standing on the side of the road.

Mechanical breakdowns rarely kill. Most mechanical or electrical failures result in a vehicle not moving. Even tyre blow outs and other problems sometimes blamed for accidents should not be fatal so long as the driver is within the speed limit and driving carefully.

Power steering and other modern equipment usually allows continued control while the driver comes to a safe halt. Indeed since almost every accident sees a driver fined or charged in court, it is quite easy to see that human error, not mechanical errors, are the problem.

Yet if every driver obeyed the rules of the road, if every driver followed the best practices sketched in the Highway Code, if every driver remained alert and was considerate of other road users and if every driver was quite sober then our death toll would plummet.

Countries whose enforcers go furthest in preventing drivers drinking and speeding have seen road accidents decrease several fold. If Zimbabwe achieved that level of driving standards and law enforcement we would lose something like 30 people killed a year on the roads, not 30 people in half a week. That is how bad our driving is.

The extra time taken on most trips by the careful non-speeding driver compared to reckless speeder is trivial.

Waiting a red light can add 60 seconds to a journey. Travelling at 60km/h across Harare rather 80km/h means the difference between a 20 minute trip and arriving alive and a 15 minute trip and almost dying. The five minutes is not worth it and that is all that is gained by breaking the law.

Driving laws are not arbitrary. They reflect decades of experience since the first cars hit the tar. We need to obey them and think while we drive.