In light of the recent spat between Minister of Transport Dullah Omar and KwaZulu-Natal African National Congress leader S’bu Ndebele, the Automobile Association of South Africa on Monday called for closer co-operation between the three spheres of government to reduce fatalities and injuries on the country’s roads.
AA representative Petro Kruger said in a statement that ”the whole idea behind the Arrive Alive campaign was to pool resources and put in a joint effort to address the problem of road safety in the country”.
Referring to the Omar-Ndebele tiff, Kruger said it ”seems that there is greater concern about who receives the credit for successes and who gets blamed for failures than whether a real impact is made on the situation on our roads”.
She said the AA would like to see better co-operation between national, provincial and local authorities so that campaigns to improve road safety become successful.
Kruger said that while government was responsible for ensuring that roads were in good condition; drivers and vehicles were fit to be on the roads and traffic law enforcement was in place, it was still the responsibility of each individual driver to drive sensibly and take responsibility for his life and those of his or her passengers.
Kruger said many South African road users needed to change their attitude away from the current mindset that they were only breaking the law if they were caught.
”We also want to see that prosecutions of drunk drivers receive the same priority as serious crimes, as well as a dedicated national traffic police force put in place,” she said.
The AA called on Omar to urgently convene a meeting ‒ within the nest week — of all stakeholders to evaluate and assess the current road safety situation in South Africa, including the departments of justice and health. – Sapa