They’re still playing that ridiculous “Arrive Alive” ad on the radio. The one that says something along the lines of “If you run over a pedestrian you WILL be charged with culpable homicide, whether it’s your fault or not!” That’s balderdash, and they know it. Only if it could be proved that you contributed to the “accident” through negligent or reckless driving could you be charged with culpable homicide. If some drunken yobbo lurches in front of you on a freeway in the middle of the night there’s no way you can be held to blame. Besides, if you’re riding a motorcycle you and your passenger will most probably be as dead as he is, and that’s what really annoys me.
A recent spate of letters to the press complaining about the unfairness of the stated policy solicited a response from one Carlos Esteves, Deputy Head, Road Systems Management, for the eThekwini Transport Authority. “The campaign ‘Pedestrians are Here to Stay’ centres on the reality that in as much as efforts are being made to educate and regulate pedestrians using freeways, motorists must drive responsibly should pedestrians be present on the freeway, ” says Mr Esteves. “In the event of a pedestrian being involved in an accident in these circumstances, the motorist will be required to defend himself in a court of law with regard to his driver behaviour for the prevailing circumstances and how reasonable the behaviour was.” In other words, they can’t do anything about the pedestrians, so they’ll try to pin the blame on the drivers.
Let’s cut through the politically correct crap and look at the facts. Over 5 000 pedestrians are killed on South African roads every year — that’s about 40% of all road fatalities. A large percentage of these are run over on freeways, and well over half of them are drunk at the time. According to Ride Alive’s own statistics, between 12 and 20 of these pedestrians are killed by motorcyclists. What they don’t or won’t — tell us is how many motorcyclists and their passengers end up killed or crippled every year because they had the misfortune to encounter drunk pedestrians lurching across freeways. Arrive Alive also concedes that 31 % of accidents are caused by pedestrians. Does that mean that 80 of the 250 motorcyclists who die on South African roads annually are killed by pedestrians? How many motorcyclists have died after losing control of their bikes avoiding pedestrians who fled the scene while the dust was still settling? Was anybody charged? Why is there no serious campaign to clear our freeways of pedestrians?
The Daily Dispatch last year ran a story about an East London matric student who was killed on his way to school, when his motorcycle collided with a jaywalker, who received only minor injuries. Was the pedestrian charged with culpable homicide? The same article made mention of an earlier accident in KwaZulu-Natal that took the lives of eight British tourists when their tour bus crashed after hitting a pedestrian who ran out into a national road. The official response was interesting. The Daily Dispatch reports that “The Transport Department expressed concern about the number of pedestrian deaths, warning motorists and pedestrians to exercise extreme caution, especially at night or in poor weather.”
The politically-correct viewpoint taken by the government and Arrive Alive, that millions of people have no transport and thus have to walk, often across freeways, holds no water with me. The state makes enough money out of toll roads and licence fees to erect pedestrian bridges in high traffic areas, but they don’t. Maybe, like most of us, they’ve also noticed that the pedestrians ignore the existing bridges anyway, because it’s far easier to cross the road at ground level than climb the stairs. Or perhaps they don’t really care.
Freeways are meant to be used exclusively by motor vehicles, and no amount of rationalisation can justify the huge number of people we see walking on ours every day. The consequences of hitting a pedestrian in a car are far less severe than those of doing the same thing on a motorcycle. The car driver is thus welcome to feel guilty about the person he runs over on the freeway, even if the accident is no fault of his own. For myself, I don’t care if the culprit is a blind, one-legged HIV-positive pregnant lesbian refugee from Somalia with a baby in her arms. If I spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair because of her I’m going to feel, not guilt, but never-ending anger.
First published in 2Wheels magazine, June / July 2005 issue.
The Advertising Standards Authority ruled on July 18 that the Arrive Alive advertisement was untrue, in that a collision in which a pedestrian was injured or killed would not automatically result in the driver who struck him being charged. The ASA ordered the Department of Transport to immediately withdraw the contentious part of the advertisement. As of 10 August the ad was still being flighted in its original format.