The KZN Road Safety Strategy

KwaZulu-Natal is recognized as the leader in road safety in South Africa. This is because the Minister of Transport, Mr S’bu Ndebele, realized the need for a comprehensive safe roads strategy. His department researched various options, and decided to follow "world’s best practice" of the state of Victoria in Australia.

What is important is that communities need to understand that the death rate on South Africa’s roads

Several staffers visited Australia to observe the implementation of the strategy, and a team of consultants from Victoria came to South Africa in January 1998. They stayed to consult with a multi-disciplinary team of local road safety practitioners to ensure that the strategy was appropriate for the KwaZulu-Natal situation.

The basis of the strategy is four-fold: enforcement, education, engineering and evaluation.

Enforcement
  • Heavy and visible enforcement, particularly in the main areas of offence – speed, alcohol abuse and seat belt-wearing
  • Improvements in vehicle and driver licensing in areas of policing and systems
Education
  • Advertising to support enforcement messages with emphasis on the consequences of unsafe behaviour
  • Education of children and adults, particularly of risk groups such as taxi drivers, passengers and pedestrians
  • Public awareness projects to keep road safety on everybody’s agenda, and to encourage compliance and support
  • Community programmes to ensure buy-in, development and capacity building, especially of previously disadvantaged communities
Engineering 
  • Low-cost engineering programmes at hazardous locations. These involve erection of traffic lights, speed reduction by speed tables, rumble strips or building of pavements or barriers, or other remedial measures
  • Improvement of vehicle design and maintenance, including vehicle roadworthiness and testing
  • Control of heavy vehicles
Evaluation 
  • Evaluation of all projects to ensure responsible use of money and effectiveness of the measures
  • Production of accurate and up-to-date data on which to base evaluation and planning
  • Research projects for the effective implementation of various measures and for a scientifically based, data-driven strategy.

Asiphephe reduced crashes by an unprecedented 35 percent between 1996 and 1998. The "Arrive Alive" campaign was launched following the effectiveness’ of the KwaZulu-Natal "Asiphephe" (Let us be safe) project. This started as a diluted version of the State of Victoria strategy, focusing on holiday periods.

The most recent phase of "Arrive Alive" has become a year-round programme, using the four elements, education, enforcement, engineering and evaluation in a countrywide road safety initiative. The campaign is known and understood by over 90 per cent of South Africans. This is a remarkable marketing achievement in a country that has such high levels of illiteracy.

What is important is that communities need to understand that the death rate on South Africa’s roads is unacceptable. The pain, suffering and financial costs of crashes can be substantially reduced by a commitment to change behaviour and attitude.

 

Related Topic

Coping with road safety in KZN

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