 
The Situation The Province of KwaZulu-Natal comprises an area of 92,000 square kilometres, making up 7,6% of the land area of South Africa. The Province has a sub-tropical climate and has a substantially higher annual rainfall than any other province. Approximately 8 million people live in KwaZulu-Natal, making it the highest populated province and comprising 20,3% of the total South African population. 56.5% of the population lives in rural areas, and 43,5% in urban and peri-urban areas. There are currently about 6 million licensed drivers and 6,73 million registered vehicles in South Africa. Just over one million of these drivers (16,67%) reside in KwaZulu-Natal and nearly 962,000 (14,28%) of the country’s vehicles are registered in the province. The total road network of South Africa is approximately 500,000 kilometres, of which KwaZulu-Natal makes up 4,5% comprising 22,878 kilometres of roadway, of which just over half is tarred. Around 15,9% of crashes, which take place in South Africa, occur in KwaZulu-Natal. This is an under-representation in relation to the population, length of roads and vehicle numbers. This is so in view of the huge traffic experienced in the province during most public holidays, festive seasons as well as school holidays and other challenges such as the topography and weather. The province is extremely mountainous. The world famous Drakensberg Mountain range being over 3200 metres. The main road from Van Reenen to Durban dropping 1944 metres from the KwaZulu-Natal border to the coast. This makes for extremely dangerous driving conditions, and encourages formation of misty and rainy conditions throughout the year, especially on the escarpment. The Challenges The high numbers of people living in rural areas, which are densely populated, makes for dangerous conditions because of high volume pedestrian activity. Lack of adequate facilities for pedestrians – a problem that invariably results in the high number of pedestrian fatalities – is but one of the challenges facing the Province. However, this is currently one of our major priorities. Taxi Commuter facilities are no better. These need to be improved drastically including being paved and fenced – for the convenience of the commuters. Some of the roads in the rural areas are not fenced, thus resulting in livestock roaming freely and dangerously on the roads. Rain and misty conditions are a daily occurrence in large parts of the province – sometimes, especially in winter snow falls. These are unfamiliar to most South African drivers. They need to adjust their speed to cope with such conditions. The KwaZulu-Natal coast is a designated holiday area, easily accessible to the 7 million residents of Gauteng, International visitors as well as other South Africans. It provides a variety of special holiday attractions, concerts, wonderful beaches, game parks and historical areas which attract tens of thousands of visitors. This number multiplies even higher during the Easter Holidays and Festive seasons. Visiting drivers are not always aware of our "Zero Tolerance" policy, and have not been exposed to our regional conditions. Traffic enforcement throughout the province is in the hands of 64 local authorities, this includes the Durban Metropolitan Police Services, as well as the KwaZulu-Natal Road Traffic Inspectorate. There are too few traffic officers engaged in full time enforcement activities in the province, with officers at a ratio of 1:7,500 members of the public. This is far under-resourced compared to the 1:750 experienced in Western Europe and the United States. The Justice system is unable to cope with the number of cases going through the courts. More than 15000 cases were outstanding as at the end of April 2001 and the backlog increases month by month. This results in long delays in the prosecution of cases – thus the offender appears to be getting away with murder and reduces the effects of penalties which are eventually imposed. (Natal Mercury 24 April 2001)
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