Judged by government-released statistics, the fatalities on South African roads did come down this holiday season. By all indication, the introduction of road blocks and a "zero tolerance" policy has had the desired results.

The death toll this past December officially stands at 1 050, which is almost 300 down from the 1 348 of December 2008. It seems the vigorous law-enforcement prompted by Transport Minister S'bu Ndebele's "zero tolerance" approach, should be thanked for that.

During the first half of December, before the law-enforcement programme kicked in, the death toll was actually rising and reaching figures double that of the previous year. But once the road-blocks, vehicle checks, alcohol tests and other measures fully kicked in around mid-December, the official death toll apparently came down dramatically. This was confirmed to Leadership Intelligence Bulletin this week by Transport ministry spokesperson Logan Maistry.

Have figures been fiddled?

However, independent road-safety journalist and MD of driving.co.za, Rob Handfield-Jones, rejected all of this as nonsense. According to him, the figures have been fiddled with by government.

In a statement, he makes the startling claim that the death toll for December 2009 had actually increased by 16 percent compared to December 2008.

What is more, Handfield-Jones, implies that the massive law-enforcement effort failed. He says the death toll climbed despite around 285 000 speeding tickets being issued, showing, according to him, that "speed control has once again been shown to be ineffective at reducing road deaths".

In an online column Handfield-Jones makes what seems to be a solid case in exposing how Minister Ndebele is making wild, unsubstantiated claims and how the media is reporting incorrect figures without bothering to check them against the correct and available statistics.

However, Maistry stresses that the figures released by the Transport department are preliminary figures only. Nonetheless, he says, each accident is reported to the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), a body that was created to take charge of vehicle registration, traffic information systems, public communication and traffic law enforcement. All of these accidents reported to the RTMC are then individually confirmed by police stations around the country.

This is how the Transport department arrived at its (preliminary) official death toll, which shows 298 less fatalities this December compared to the previous year.

"One road death is one too many..."

Maistry says his department is not entering into any dispute with Handfield-Jones and has no reason to fiddle with figures. "Our aim is to save lives. Road deaths are not mere statistics. Just one road death is one too many."

However, there has been criticism of his "one road death is one too many" statement as being a cynical platitude as well as of his failure to explain the discrepancy in figures.

Be that as it may, preliminary indications are that of the 1 050 deaths, 276 were drivers, 419 passengers and 355 pedestrians. A breakdown of deaths by province had not yet been compiled.

During December more than 285 000 fines were issued to drivers for speeding, 3 487 drivers were nabbed for drunken driving and 244 for reckless and negligent driving. Officials had impounded 2 517 vehicles for not being roadworthy.

"We found speed to be the biggest cause of road accidents," says Maistry, contradicting Handfield-Jones' claim that speed control did not reduce road deaths. Maistry says the first UN Global Conference on Road Safety held in Russia recently and which was attended by Ndebele, confirmed that speed is the biggest contributor to the more than 3 400 people who die every day in road accidents around the world.

However, there seems to be a strong opinion too that impatience ? caused by long delays at toll gates, by road works and traffic congestion in peak holiday times ? is perhaps a bigger contributor. Maistry says impatience and speed go hand in hand. He singles out fatigue as the other major contributor, calling it the silent killer because "one cannot test for fatigue as with drunken driving or speed".

"We would like to believe that our law enforcement campaign through road blocks and other measures and the Arrive Alive campaign made a difference this year and achieved the lower death toll," says Maistry. "We will be intensifying and applying our zero-tolerance approach towards all traffic offences beyond the festive season as part of the government's strategy to address the high number of road accidents on our roads 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year," he said.

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