Road deaths marred by flawed statistics

Dipuo Peters provides figures on road deaths but these do not reflect the actual number of lives lost on SA's roads. Image: GCIS

The numbers the Department of Transport offered each year are at best a guess and completely depend on the South African Police Service's record-keeping.

SA is one of the world's most dangerous countries in which to drive. The most recent numbers available from the World Health Organisation are from 2010 and these dated figures show the country to have the world's sixth-most deadly roads, with a death rate of 31.9 people per 100,000.

SA is outscored for its road horrors by countries including Venezuela (37.2) and Nigeria (33.7), while the deadliest country to drive in was the Dominican Republic (41.7).

At last week's media briefing on the festive season death toll, an annual event that wrongly lends credence to the idea that more people die on the roads over holiday periods, Transport Minister Dipuo Peters gave three different numbers for fatalities between 1 December and 7 January. All three number were lower than what may have been the number last year, which reporters were told confidently was 1,558.

Peters put the deaths at 1,276, (a number she misread from her speech). The toll in her printed speech, 1,376, turned out to be incorrect and the correct figure was said to be 1,357

Variation in figures

The number of people who lose their lives on SA's roads do not match the figures provided by the authorities. Image: Road Safety

Acting Department of Transport director-general D Mawethu Vilana's reaction was telling. He initially declined to provide comparative figures for the past year on road deaths, saying it was not a numbers game when lives were being lost.

He later gave a number for 2012 as 1,558, but reports written a year ago contradict this number. Former Transport Minister Ben Martins said 1,465 had been killed during this period.

Justice Project SA chairman Howard Dembovsky says no one has any idea how many people are killed on the roads because of the way accidents are measured. Dembovsky says road death statistics are not meaningful as they are fundamentally flawed and for years have not taken into account people who die from vehicle accidents but not at the accident scene

The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), the financially troubled enforcement agency that narrowly avoided being dissolved last year, is responsible for the compilation of road statistics. It is completely dependent on police filing death reports, which RTMC chief operating officer Gilberto Martins says is not a priority for police officials.

Reliable statistics are important. They allow for focused interventions which go beyond posters and radio campaigns exhorting people not to speed and not to drink and drive.

Previous statistics more accurate

Defensive driving specialist Rob Handfield-Jones says that in Sweden the government identified stretches of road where there had been a high incidence of head-on collisions and installed steel barriers down the middle of the freeway. This was to stop people from being able to overtake on the solid line.

Handfield-Jones says not since 2006 have reliable traffic statistics been available. This was when responsibility for road safety reverted to the newly established RTMC.

Thousands of people die on SA's roads annually and campaigns to reduce road deaths are not working successfully. Image: ER24

"The previous statistics produced by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) provided a range of information on traffic patterns, accidents and vehicle population," Handfield-Jones says.

Road safety campaigns relied on sketchy statistics pieced together from what the police were able to compile and these dealt only with fatal accidents, which make up about 1% of all the incidents that took place.

Martins says fatal accidents represent a higher proportion, but could not offer a number to challenge the 1%.

Total deaths

Statistics the CSIR compiled used to include those drawn from the Medical Research Council's (MRC's) National Injury Mortality Surveillance System.

Handfield-Jones says the MRC estimated that there were about 200,000 unnatural deaths annually in the country, and roads account for between 25% and 30%. This means SA's roads are killing twice as many people as the Department of Transport is reporting.

SA spends about R100m a year on road safety and has committed to halving road deaths by 2020, but with no reliable way to measure the problem this target will remain out of reach and thousands of lives will continue to be lost.

The RTMC is planning to release next month a three-year review of road deaths in the country, which takes into account the international measure that was supposed to be adopted in 2010. The international standard records deaths that occur up to 30 days after an accident. SA has or had been using a seven-day period.

Martins says the work is being done now to convert and "average out" the statistics for the past three years according to the 30-day standard.

The problems with this are immediate as the information has limited application for intervention where there are repeated incidences.

Peters, appointed to the position half way through last year, is clearly frustrated by the senselessness of the road deaths that were mostly attributable to well-known causes. These included drunkenness, recklessness and driving at high speeds.

Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge