Pedestrians accounted for most deaths over the 2023 Easter period. Image: Pexels.
Reckless and negligent driving main cause of Easter road fatalities
Reckless and negligent driving was one of the human factors that was the main cause of fatalities over the Easter period.
Pedestrians accounted for most deaths over the 2023 Easter period. Image: Pexels.
Transport Minister, Sindisiwe Chikunga has revealed that reckless and negligent driving were the main cause of road fatalities over the Easter period.
Chikunga held a briefing on Friday, 14 April to release the official statistics.
RECKLESS DRIVING MAIN CAUSE OF ROAD FATALITIES
During the briefing, Chikunga revealed that human factors, which include reckless and negligent driving, was the most prominent contributing factor in all fatalities at 96,2 followed by road and environmental factors at 4.5% while vehicle factors were the least contributor at 1,1%.
The Minister said the unacceptably high contribution of human factors reflects poor driving habits of motorists and is also a reflection of the high number of incompetent drivers on the roads.
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“We are scaling up anti-corruption interventions including the use of technology such as the computerised learner licence testing sheets including the smart DLTs which we saw this morning, which we will be rolling out throughout the country,” she said.
PEDESTRIANS WERE THE MOST KILLED DURING EASTER
Of the high number of road users who perished on South African roads are pedestrians, who accounted for 44,4% of all fatalities, followed by passengers at 27,7%. Drivers accounted for 25.6%;cyclists at 1,3% while the road user status of 1% could not be determined.
The highest number of pedestrians died in collisions that happened in the Western Cape, Limpopo, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
The highest number of fatalities occurred on Friday and the lowest number was recorded on Thursday. Most of the fatalities occurred at 15:00 and 22:00 and were predominantly characterised by hit and run crashes, single vehicle overturned, pedestrian collisions and head on collisions.
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