Acknowledgements

Minister’s Foreword

Introduction

Setting the scene: The Statistics, the Safety Problem, the Key Contributory Factors

Road Traffic Management - Mission, Strategic Objective and Key Focal Areas

The Road to Safety: Strategic Map

Outputs and outcomes

Managing the strategy

Managing & coordinating the strategy: Diagram

Major Short to Medium term Interventions

Summary table: Proposed Road Safety Interventions to 2005

• Cabinet has been fully consulted on the new road safety strategy and has approved it in principle.
• Provincial MECs for Transport have been involved, through MINCOM and various special meetings/workshops, in every step of the gestation process of the Strategy
• The invaluable assistance of the following stakeholders is also gratefully acknowledged:
• As members of the Strategy Implementation Working Group: representatives of the SAPS, Gautrans, KZN Traffic Inspectorate, CSIR, and SABS
• The Road Traffic Safety Board

(Commissioned the strategy process, endorsed the original Strategy 2000 draft discussion document and recently approved a major feedback report on the final draft of the present document, The Road to Safety).

• Road Accident Fund
• South African National Roads Agency Ltd
• Cross-Border Road Transport Agency
• Transport industry trade unions
• Inter-Provincial Traffic Officers' Conference
• Automobile Association
• CARS (Committee for Active Road Safety)
• Drive Alive
• Road Freight Association (RFA)
• South African Bus Owners Association (SABOA)
• Coach Owners Association of South Africa (COASA)
• Taxi industry
• SA Medical Council
• Major oil companies
• Short-term insurance industry
• Gerotek / Gerotrain, Test & Drive, Masterdrive
• Institute of Road Transport Engineers (IRTE)
• South African Institute of Driving Instructors (SAIDI)
• Various metropolitan and district councils
• SANCO
• SASCO
• NGOs and community organisations

Foreword by the Minister

I want to take this opportunity to offer my heartfelt personal thanks to all those who participated in the process. I am greatly encouraged by the breadth and depth of the responses we received – and are still continuing to receive. These responses have demonstrated beyond any doubt that there exists a massive groundswell of informed and imaginative public support for the cause of road safety in South Africa. We have listened and learned. The contributions received have been of great value in helping us to refine and hone the strategy for maximum effectiveness. What we offer here, therefore, is not a Utopian wish list, but a set of carefully balanced and prioritised actions that are practical, affordable and achievable.

I put before you today the final revision of the strategy document, with a new, simpler title in keeping with its practical orientation: The Road to Safety, 2001-2005. This document mandates a set of coordinated actions that we think will begin to lay secure foundations for law compliance, responsibility and mutual respect on South Africa's roads. It focuses on creating systems and structures that work, and enforcement and adjudication measures that will bite.

The Road to Safety is driven by the need to find answers to a set of clearly identified interlocking problems across the whole spectrum of road safety and traffic management. The interventions it proposes are derived from an in-depth analysis of our strengths and weaknesses in each of the three critical areas of road safety: the road environment, the road user and the vehicle.

In summary:

• The strategy requires that systematic attention be paid to upgrading road infrastructure and signage on the basis of continuous audits of hazardous locations and crash red-spots.
• It requires that drivers be fit to drive and vehicles fit to use our roads.

It will therefore lead to the introduction of corrective legislative and regulatory measures that will tighten standards and rules in all the most critical areas of safety management.

The Road to Safety will attack incompetence, fraud and corruption head-on in the areas of driver training and licensing, vehicle testing and on-road enforcement. It will overhaul our inspectorates and our regulatory and traffic management institutions, creating new capacities and professional skills to ensure that regulation works and enforcement hits the right targets. By creating a strong institutional platform, the strategy will kick-start the process of taking criminals out of the system and getting dangerous and irresponsible drivers and operators off our roads.

The Road to Safety will strengthen regulation of road-based freight and public transport modes and will encourage (and where necessary legislate for) the implementation of vehicle safety technologies that are proven and appropriate to South African circumstances. It will intensify road safety communication campaigns and will build public-private partnerships and new forms of community participation that will ensure the long-term sustainability of all government-led road safety initiatives.

In the sphere of community participation it will do something further that has never seriously been attempted in South Africa before: it will consciously create mechanisms that protect, empower and give a voice to our most vulnerable road users (especially public transport passengers and pedestrians) so that they at last start to become effective participants in the transport system - architects of their own safety rather than passive victims of the decisions or negligence of others.

In this context, it is important to emphasise that the new road safety strategy is fully aligned with government’s second term commitment to accelerated service delivery and with the overall goals of coherence, cost-effectiveness and customer service spelt out in the 1996 White Paper on Transport and in Moving South Africa–The Action Agenda. The Road to Safety should be seen as a critical element in the creation of an integrated public and private transport system – by road, rail, air and sea - that is responsive, safe and secure, customer-driven and sustainable in the long run.

While we believe that rapid short to medium term gains can be made through the structural and systemic interventions proposed in The Road to Safety, 2001-2005, we are fully aware that the struggle to change basic attitudes and transform South African road user culture will be long and hard. While government will make every effort to facilitate, champion and promote the transformation that is so urgently needed, it cannot win the battle alone. The conscious and responsible participation of all road users, from pre-primary school students upwards, is what is required. This means you and me; your family and mine; our friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Building a road culture of safety, care and compassion means – and can only mean - zero tolerance towards the slightest element of infringement.

I commend The Road to Safety to you. Please join us and commit yourself to helping us realise its goals.

Every strategic initiative has its own specific history. The new directions that emerge in The Road to Safety represent a further refinement and streamlining of the priorities outlined in the Strategy 2000 discussion document, which were themselves arrived at by grappling with three major challenges inherited from the recent past.

The first challenge was the need to revise the framework of the Department of Transport’s 1996 Road Traffic Management Strategy in order to update and rationalise our goals in line with a more sharply defined set of commitments to immediate impact, system sustainability and institutional accountability. The new shape that emerges in The Road to Safety is informed both by looking back critically at our experience over the past six years in government and by looking towards and beyond the two big institutional changes unfolding in the near future. These changes are:

1. The entry into force of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (AARTO) Act, and the establishment of its key instrument, the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA); and
2. The establishment of the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC).

We expect the headquarters of the Road Traffic Infringement Agency to open in Gauteng within a matter of months, and to be followed by an incremental roll-out process in the other eight provinces. Setting up the Road Traffic Management Corporation will take a little longer. Despite the fact that its enabling Act is already in place, various issues related to division of revenue and the pooling of traffic management resources require further attention before the RTMC can be launched as a functioning legal entity.

The RTIA will standardise penalties for common offences and will give effect to the Points Demerit System in respect of both credit card format driving licenses and operators’ cards. It will for the first time create a sure and effective mechanism for taking persistent offenders off the road (through licence suspension/removal or loss of the operator’s card)) but will also allow for the reduction of demerit points for good behaviour (drivers) and consistent law compliance (fleet operators).

The RTIA will be launched in incremental stages, beginning in Pretoria and rolling out to all the other provincial centres over an 18-month period. After deployment is completed, the Points Demerit System will immediately come into effect countrywide.

The overriding aim of the Road Traffic Management Corporation is to overcome the current fragmentation of traffic management functions across hundreds of provincial and local jurisdictions, and to bring a new professional coherence and improved morale into the entire system.

The RTMC will be set up under a Shareholders Committee consisting of the national Minister of Transport, the provincial Transport MECs and representatives of the SA Local Government Association (SALGA).

It will steadily bring all road traffic management functions into a single legal & institutional framework that allows for the contractual pooling of traffic management resources countrywide, rationally planned allocation of capital, technological and operational resources, centralised statistical monitoring, healthier revenue streams (via the link to AARTO) and the creation of clearly-defined professional development paths for traffic officers, supported by high quality training.

The functions that will be activated in the short term will be:

• Vehicle registration and licensing (with intensive training of officers);
• Traffic information systems;
• Public communication; and

Traffic law enforcement (with a special emphasis on vehicle overload control measures supported by public-private

The second challenge, which emerged into focus very strongly in 1999, was the need to urgently analyse the cluster of safety issues highlighted by a spate of serious crashes in the public passenger transport sector over the past two to three years. This concentrated our attention on the need to develop a comprehensive, tight and effective regulation, monitoring and enforcement regime to deal with every aspect of public passenger and road freight transport safety, and to generalise our solutions to all other areas of road traffic management and quality control as appropriate.

The third challenge was the need to formally recognise the proper role of Arrive Alive, not as an all-purpose strategic and operational tool but as a clearly delimited rolling tactical programme designed to achieve effective practical cooperation between the three spheres of government in ongoing road traffic and road safety management. The more we are able to unburden Arrive Alive of strategic preoccupations, the freer it becomes to concentrate all its energies on day-to-day enforcement and quality control, linked to innovative efforts to secure local media, business and community participation.

The Road to Safety, on the other hand, is the outcome of a conscious process of stepping back from operational matters to make space for research, analysis, consultation and strategic planning. This new document effectively becomes the blueprint and guide for all the decisive road traffic safety interventions that are going to be implemented in our country over the next five years and beyond.

It therefore makes a point of addressing issues of system and structure, while at the same time providing the overall context and rationale for the key types of intervention that are going to be given priority over the next five years, in all three spheres of government and in partnership with the private sector and local communities.

As a result of this reorientation, Arrive Alive is already starting to show significantly better results as it transforms itself into a year-round, 24-hour a day, 7-day a week programme of coordinated inter-governmental enforcement and communication actions.

Arrive Alive's increasing maturity and effectiveness were underlined early in 2001 by a further substantial decline in the number of fatal road crashes, number of vehicles involved in fatal crashes and number of fatalities recorded over the 2000/2001 festive season. Interim statistics comparing Dec 2000-Jan 2001 with Dec 1999-Jan 2000, showed the following encouraging trends:

No. of fatalities 1152 Dec 2000-Jan 2001 1292 Dec 1999-Jan 2000 - 140 Decrease - 10.8% % Decrease

The key issue now is to sustain such reductions year-round. It goes without saying that a provisional count of 1152 festive season deaths on our roads remains totally unacceptable. But we are confident that the clear separation we have made between the strategic and tactical spheres, together with the conscious repositioning of Arrive Alive, will pay off in securing further and greater reductions in road crash and death rates over the coming years.

The Road to Safety has, in effect, become Arrive Alive's parent. In taking responsibility for the short, medium and long term structural and systemic issues, it has one central aim: to strike directly at the underlying problems that have given rise to the carnage on South African roads over the past decades. These problems are both subjective and objective.

On the subjective side, the challenge is to overcome a deeply entrenched and pervasive disregard for law compliance, a culture of widespread aggression towards other road users and high levels of irresponsibility with regard to the basic rules of safe road usage. The key weapons in this struggle are effective enforcement and adjudication, intensive and consistent education and communication programmes and well-structured and channelled public participation.

On the objective side, we have identified six interlocking and overlapping focal areas requiring intervention in terms of both systems and structures. These are the following:

• Road environment quality;
• Driver fitness;
• Vehicle fitness;
• Pedestrian safety and fitness (safe road usage by pedestrians);
• Reform of regulatory and monitoring institutions;
• Targeted communication campaigns to challenge public attitudes and behaviour, supported by private sector sponsorship; practical road safety training in schools and tertiary institutions; community road safety forums and programmes.

Many of the symptoms of dysfunction in these areas - and some of the underlying structural issues - had already begun to be addressed by the Arrive Alive campaign. The Road to Safety, however, puts forward a five-year programme of detailed short and medium term actions designed to lay the foundation for long-term stability in road traffic management and control and for significant behavioural change by road users in each of the key problem areas.

Vital Statistics: South African Road Use

There are currently about 6 million licensed drivers and about 6,73 million licensed and registered vehicles on South Africa’s roads. This figure is made up of:

• 3,86 million sedan cars [57.36%].
• 252 000 minibuses - of which some 126 000 operate as minibus taxis [3.75%].
• 24 000 buses [0.36%].
• 227 000 motorised heavy freight vehicles [3.37%].
• 1,2 million light delivery vehicles (bakkies) [17.83%].
• 1,17 million other (trailers, including truck trailers, motorcycles, special vehicles, etc) [17.38%].
• The total road and street network is approximately 500 000 km in length.
• The annual vehicle/km travelled on SA roads is estimated at about 98 000 million - or 268m km a day - of which 153m is travelled daily on the rural road network (including inter-city national roads).
• Keeping all this traffic moving are fuel sales of about 9500 megalitres a year.

• There are currently about 512 000 traffic crashes a year [511 605 in 1998].
• Of these, about 28 000 are fatal or lead to serious injury [7 260 crashes involving fatalities, 21 265 involving serious injuries in 1998].
• In 1998, 9 086 people lost their lives on SA roads, while 36 246 were seriously and 84 358 slightly injured.
• The total cost of these crashes to the SA economy is currently estimated at around R13.8 billion a year.

The most recent finalised statistics on crash rates in South Africa (1998) show a figure of 776 crashes per every 10,000 vehicles per annum—or 400 crashes per every 100 million vehicle kms travelled (as per the two main types of International benchmark measurement).

In terms of the first benchmark, South Africa’s road fatality rate for 1998 was 13.73 per 10 000 vehicles.

Where does this put us in global terms? The statistics are sobering. In the chart below we give a representative sample of international fatality rates per 10 000 vehicles for the latest year (1996) when such global figures were available.

[PMG Ed note: Table on International Fatality Rates not included]

With the state of Victoria, Australia, registering 1.2 deaths per 10 000 vehicles and China registering 26, South Africa – despite the welcome drop from 15.13 deaths per 10 000 vehicles in 1995 to 13.73 in 1998 – still falls well to the "wrong side" of the mean. What emerges from this comparison is that our performance puts us firmly in the "developing world" category – ahead of China and India, but significantly behind Turkey and Brazil (and roughly on a par with Russia). The scale of the problem we face could not be clearer.

However, we need to keep a sense of historical proportion here. In the next chart we offer a long-range retrospective view of fluctuations in the South African road fatality rate (1935 – 1998).

[PMG Ed note: Table not included]

From this chart, two facts immediately become evident. The first is that our record has always been bad, though with significant downward "blips" in the last years of World War Two (fuel shortages/less domestic travel) and in 1974 (compare with 1973) when, as a result of the global oil crisis, tight speed restrictions were enforced on SA roads).

The second is that in recent years – and particularly since the launch of Arrive Alive – we have witnessed what is starting to look like a significant downward trend. The aim of The Road to Safety, in combination with an all-year Arrive Alive programme, is to consolidate and accelerate this trend.

[Note: Arrive Alive is a multi-dimensional programme of enforcement, coordination and communication. But the emphasis it places on speed limit enforcement is set to intensify greatly over the life of this strategy. This approach is grounded not only in the lessons of 1974, but in the results of study after study conducted in developed, middle-income and developing countries, all of which prove an incontestable correlation between speed (both absolute and too high for the prevailing circumstances), insufficient reaction time, crashes and fatalities. (See "The Speed Debate" below)].

Having outlined the general picture, the next step is to focus on crash and fatality trends for the different types of vehicles (and by implication their drivers) using South African roads. This has for some time now given us the information we need to serve as a rough indicator of the areas to which remedial attention should urgently be directed. The next figure tells the basic story.

[PMG Ed note: Table not included]

The most important pointers here are the following:

The sedan car is overwhelmingly the type of vehicle most often involved in crashes. This is obviously partly due to the fact that these vehicles comprise 57% of the total vehicle population.

But, if we exclude the category of "other" vehicles from our calculations (on the grounds that many of them are not regular users of public roads) we arrive at a more realistic road usage share, which gives us a reconfigured % of the (active, daily) vehicle population for each vehicle type.

This then allows us to more accurately represent their respective levels of involvement in crashes, and so get a clearer idea of comparable driver/vehicle behaviour between categories.

The picture that emerges looks like this:

Sedan car

69.38

67.02

Minibus

4.52

8.62

LDV

21.57

17.51

Heavy Truck

4.08

5.68

Bus

0.43

1.15

In other words, we see heavy trucks, minibuses (including taxis), and buses all scoring above their representation in the vehicle population – with trucks scoring around 1½ times their weighting, minibuses scoring around double their weighting and buses scoring at nearly 2¾ times their weighting.

Summing up:

1. The high absolute number of vehicles involved in crashes represented in the graphic at the foot of p.12 tells us that:

• A large number of all drivers are misbehaving and/or seriously under-qualified/under-skilled.
• Far too many vehicles are unfit for the road.

2. The discrepancies between the different vehicle types in terms of their relative rates of involvement in crashes indicates that the combination of driver and vehicle unfitness is particularly acute in the heavy freight, minibus taxi and bus sectors.

This drives us towards our strategic emphasis on the following key areas of intervention:

• Further tightening up on-road enforcement of speed, alcohol limits and vehicle overloading (Arrive Alive operational issues);
• Restructuring our inspectorates, cleaning up driving licence and vehicle testing, formalising and regulating the driving school sector, setting tougher professional driver qualification criteria and tightening regulation of freight and public passenger fleet operators (system & structure issues).

The need for these targeted interventions is further confirmed if we examine trend-based data on both crash and fatality rates per vehicle type per 100 million vehicle kilometres travelled over the period 1991-1998. The figures (see over) tell a mixed story.

[PMG Ed note: Table not included]

LDVs’ rate of involvement in crashes is lower than the average for all vehicles, and has shown a slight downward trend over the period.

• The crash rate for the category "all vehicles" has shown a steady, if very gradual, downward trend over the period.
• The crash rates for heavy vehicles declined from 1991-93, rose from 1994-96 and began declining again in 1997-98.
• The crash rate for buses was constant at just below 600 crashes per 100 million vehicle kilometres travelled from 1991-93, and then began to show a sharp upward trend, apparently peaking at about 950 in 1997. It is too early to say whether the slight decline in 1998 represents the start of a reversal in this trend or not.
• The crash rate for minibuses has been fairly constant at a high level of about 900-1000 crashes per 100 million vehicle kilometres travelled (apart from a peak of over 1200 in 1996). There is as yet no sign of any downward trend emerging.

If we now turn to fatality rates for the same period, we see additional patterns of unevenness.

[PMG Ed note: Table not included]

This graphic tells us that:

• The fatality rate for the category "all vehicles" has come down from 11.5 (1991) to 7 (1998) per 100 million vehicle kilometres. This represents a significant downward trend, probably associated with increasing seatbelt usage and gradual improvements in the safety construction of new vehicles.
• The fatality rates for heavy vehicles and LDVs have fluctuated slightly but are fairly constant with a very slight decline.

[Note: the fatality rate for heavy vehicles indicated here is somewhat misleading, since fatalities registered in crashes are based on vehicle occupants. In crashes involving heavy freight vehicles, the rate of occupant deaths is much lower than the rate of collateral deaths caused (persons in other vehicles and pedestrians].

• The fatality rate for buses showed a constant and alarming upward trend from 1991 to 1997 (from under 5 to 13 fatalities per 100 million vehicle kilometres travelled), almost catching up with the fatality rate for minibus taxis. It is too early to say whether the drop to 11 fatalities/100 vehicle km registered in 1998 represents the start of a sustained decline or not.
• The fatality rate for minibuses has fluctuated at a consistently high level of between about 15 and 20 fatalities/100 million vehicle km travelled. There is no sign yet of any reversal in this trend.

Our research has regularly shown that the role played by each of the three major factors involved in crashes can broadly be broken down as follows:

Driver factors - 80-90%

Vehicle factors - 10-30%

Road environment factors - 5-15%

We therefore have to ensure from the start that the attention we pay to each factor is proportionate to its significance for road safety and has the potential to achieve the greatest impact over the medium to long term. Many of the actions that appear in the list of short to medium term interventions (i.e. actions which will be unrolled during the life of the strategy to 2005) are "starter-actions" aimed at rebuilding eroded or historically inadequate institutional foundations. They will not solve all the problems instantly. But they will create a new basis for incremental strengthening of our regulatory and enforcement systems over time.

· Excessive speed or speed too fast for circumstances plays a role in approximately 30% of all crashes and about 50% in the case of commercial freight and public passenger vehicles.

Arrive Alive continually drives home the simple message "Speed kills!" There are those who dispute this statement, drawing attention to issues such as the following:

• The general debate on speed does not properly distinguish between speed causing a crash, and speed influencing injury severity once a crash occurs.
• Most road crashes occur in urban or peri-urban areas (i.e. at speeds lower than average freeway speeds); and the crash rate on national roads is significantly lower than in these areas;
• The relative speed of moving vehicles (hence force of impact) is a more significant factor in the outcome of a crash than the absolute speed of a single vehicle;
• Moving violations (speed too slow for circumstances, improper lane usage, illegal turning, running red lights or stop signs etc.) are factors at least equally salient in crashes as is absolute speed.
• On-road enforcement has traditionally devoted disproportionate attention to "trapping" on open stretches of national roads and in small towns (allegedly for "purely revenue raising" purposes);
• Local road environment and human density factors are an integral component in the determination of what a safe speed is, and in the incidence of actual crashes.

We recognise the validity of these points; so long as it is recognised that they capture important aspects of the truth, not the whole truth. We stick to the emphasis on the negative role of speed for very good reasons—and with the following specific emphases:

• The most important issue is undoubtedly speed too high for prevailing circumstances. This applies to both national and local roads. It does not, however, invalidate the need to set speed limits. If you say that "speed is not the issue" - and one assumes that this means on national roads, not in built-up urban areas—where do you draw the line? 250 km/hr? An unrestricted autobahn approach to South African national roads? Our national road environment is characterised by sudden changes of width, surface quality, weather and visibility conditions, and is further complicated by the widespread presence of pedestrians and stray animals along both urban and rural roads. We must set limits that take proper account of this complexity, and of road-user fallibility (both drivers and pedestrians).
• International crash research over many years has led to a powerful consensus on the relationship between absolute speed (as well as speed too high for circumstances) and two other linked factors: driver information overload (leading to impaired decision-making capacity) and (compounding this) the reduction of available reaction time to allow for avoidance of a potential crash situation. Crashes almost always have to do with the unexpected (i.e. a sudden dramatic increase in the number of decision variables confronting the driver). In such cases (typically arising at intersections or along busy stretches of urban or national road) the driver’s "reasonable" safety calculations, based on "normal" driving conditions, cease to apply. The equation is simple: greater speed, exponentially less available reaction time, more certainty of a crash, more devastating impact. ("The faster you go, the harder you hit.")
• Absolute speed, being a critical factor determining the likelihood of death and the severity of injuries sustained by occupants in single vehicle or multiple vehicle collisions, is of major concern to us: for all road users, but in particular for passengers in public transport vehicles (buses, coaches and minibus taxis). The death and injury rates prevailing in these sectors are absolutely unacceptable; the passengers are entirely innocent parties; and the great majority of them are "captive" to these modes of transport, without access to alternative options. Their rights require special defence, in terms of speed limit enforcement, professional driver competence and vehicle fitness assurance.
• Speeding is in many instances also related to a mind-set and behaviour patterns that are selfish, aggressive and unconcerned with the safety of other road users. It is often closely connected with the other forms of moving violation that contribute to crashes. Changing these underlying psychological/cultural factors is therefore a critical long term need, particularly in the light of widespread negative driver attitudes that still reflect live elements of South Africa’s violent, divided, highly individualised past.

Speeding violations therefore must and will be enforced, with the following proviso. Speed enforcement will pay—indeed is already paying—much greater attention than in the past to data-driven targeting. This means concentrating enforcement on identified rural, urban and peri-urban hazardous locations and road stretches, at the times of week and hours of day and night during which our statistics show the highest concentration of crashes occurring (including, of course, pedestrian collisions).

We hope that the discussion above has made it clear that, while we will continue to treat speed as a key safety issue, this does not mean that we elevate it to a level of importance above all other factors. It should be evident from what we have said that we explicitly recognise the importance of all the other factors at work—driver, vehicle and environment-related—and you will see that the whole thrust of this strategy is to develop interventions in each key area of road safety that will be both locally effective and mutually reinforcing from an overall systems perspective.

Other driver factors, which to a greater or lesser degree contribute to crashes, include:

• Driving under the influence of intoxicating liquor (continuously targeted by Arrive Alive) and/or a drug having a narcotic effect. (Testing will be stepped up during the life of this strategy, as accurate evidentiary technologies are introduced—see box);
• Fatigue resulting from exceeding the maximum acceptable uninterrupted driving hours (regularly targeted by Arrive Alive communication campaigns, and currently under negotiation with the road freight and public passenger transport sectors in the context of regulation of professional driver working hours and conditions – see Operator Fitness below);
• Basic driver incompetence (driving without proper training, without a licence or with a forged or fraudulently issued licence).

Note: The issue of basic driver incompetence moves to a very high priority position in this strategy, since our research into recurring patterns of driver error in crashes points to a clear causal relation between such error and the low levels of skill and awareness prevailing amongst thousands of drivers on South Africa’s roads. This is in turn clearly linked to the prevalence of low standards of driver training—both informal and in many driving schools—and to widespread fraud and corruption in our driving licence testing and issuing system.

[The Driving Licence Testing Inspectorate currently estimates that up to 50% of all licences currently entered into the Driving Licence Register may be licences issued or obtained in an irregular manner].

The short-term strategy tackles all these issues head on.

South Africa’s hybrid first world-third world economy and infrastructure are sharply reflected in an extremely high rate of vehicle-pedestrian collisions and fatalities, as is illustrated by the graphic below.

[PMG Ed note: Table not included]

In crashes involving pedestrians, jaywalking and walking under the influence of alcohol or drugs are the major contributory factors, being present in 40 to 50% of vehicle-pedestrian collisions in urban areas and in 30 to 40% in rural areas.

Enforcement focused on pedestrian behaviour contributing to collisions will be increased during the life of this strategy. Such enforcement will be carefully targeted as part of our broader approach to pedestrian safety, which also highlights continuous audits of hazardous locations, low cost engineering and signage upgrades, improved land use planning and sustained school and community education and participation programmes.

• Under-inflated tyres;
• Smooth or worn tyres or fitting the wrong types of tyres;
• Poor brakes;
• Faulty steering;
• Poor lights/vehicle visibility;
• Poor general maintenance of other vehicle parts such as the chassis, body, wheel alignment and shock absorbers.

• (Over)loading of passengers and freight vehicles used for commercial purposes;
• Management of vehicles (maintenance, safety and quality assurance regimes) and drivers (qualifications, refresher training, medical fitness, fatigue etc.)

• Poor maintenance of the road surface, resulting in potholes and poor ride quality;
• Poor maintenance of the road reserve and/or road verges - e.g. tall grass at junctions obscuring oncoming vehicles, broken fences allowing cattle and other domestic animals to stray onto roads, and poor maintenance of gravel shoulders;
• Inadequate signs and markings.

The Department of Transport’s Mission Statement for South African roads was defined in the 1996 White Paper on Transport Policy. It is:

What is "an acceptable level"? It is what all of us as South Africans jointly decide is acceptable, through a continuous process of open debate and consultation, founded on accurate information and taking into account both economic and fiscal realities and comparable international trends in developed and emerging countries.

In order to realise the mission, an equally clear and simple strategic objective is required. We have set this objective as being:

The targets have been set in carefully separated stages to take realistic account of the constraints still facing us in the current phase of fundamental restructuring of road traffic safety management. This restructuring work lies at the heart of The Road to Safety.

In 2005 we will thoroughly review the emerging statistical trends and, if these trends are as positive as we hope, recommit ourselves to the more ambitious target of 10% (or, if justified by progress, consider setting a higher target).

In the draft discussion document, Strategy 2000: An End to Carnage on South Africa’s Roads, we defined four key thematic areas for action. These were:

• Enforcement & Law Compliance
• Operator, Vehicle & Driver Fitness
• Infrastructure, Management & Information Systems
• Communication, Public Education & Participation

And the implied question was: "How can we make improvements in each of these thematic areas?

In The Road to Safety we are doing things differently. While we do not lose contact with the thematic areas outlined above, we now subordinate them to a data-driven focus shaped by four outcome-orientated questions:

• Where are the most acute problems and dysfunctions in the current system?
• Who or what should therefore be the priority targets or areas of intervention?
• What outcomes are we seeking to achieve?
• What are the outputs by which we will mark progress towards the achievement of these outcomes?"

In seeking answers to these questions, our starting point has to be the existing road network and the appropriate conditions of entry to or exit from this network. This means: how it supports, is used by, accommodates or should exclude (unfit) drivers and vehicles.

In arriving at decisions on these issues, we make direct use of what our research is telling us about where the critical safety problems are located, and we shape all our interventions in such a way as to make the maximum impact on the clusters of problems identified in each key component of the system: the road environment, the road user and the vehicle.

To each of these we then apply prioritised, targeted, mutually reinforcing measures to ensure that:

• Appropriate legislative and regulatory norms are in force (standards and rules);
• The right systems and institutions are in place to control the road network and conditions of access to it (institutional reform / quality monitoring);
• Compliance is increasingly achieved.

There are in turn two key aspects to compliance:

• Enforcement that is rational, visible, tough and effective (involuntary compliance); and
• Education, communication and public participation initiatives that mobilise individuals and key sectors of the community to become responsible road users and get involved in the active promotion of road safety (voluntary compliance).

Every kind of intervention that we propose in The Road to Safety - whether it is intended for the short, medium or long term - can and must fit into this framework, which is specifically designed to ensure that all our actions support and complement one another.

With this framework in place, we are able to continuously check and re-check the coherence of what we are doing, making sure that particular actions or programmes do not grow out of proportion to their place in the overall scheme, eat up resources that could better be deployed elsewhere or begin destabilising the necessary balance between the three major intervention areas.

It is critically important to make this point because it is in the nature of human enthusiasms and sectoral interests that there will be strong group tendencies to emphasise one aspect of intervention at the expense of all others. Some will emphasise officer staffing issues ("shortage of traffic police on our roads"); some will emphasise corruption in traffic policing, licensing and vehicle testing; some will emphasise vehicle defects or the importance of new vehicle safety technologies; some will emphasise low standards of driver competence and awareness; some will emphasise road infrastructure conditions; some will see draconian sentencing as the cure-all solution for all road safety problems.

Obviously, it is important to keep all these issues in focus. But what we have to recognise is that – while we welcome individuals and groups to approach us, to use the media, and to robustly argue their cases – our role and responsibility as government is to maintain a balanced overview of all the issues, and to deploy both taxpayers’ money and supportive private sector resources where we are convinced they will have the most impact, in the most cost-effective manner possible.

This means seeking the greatest possible degree of clarity about the targets we are setting in terms of user group outcomes, intermediate and long term outcomes; and defining, as precisely as we are able to, the outputs by which we will measure progress.

It also means that for each intervention there must be a clear implementation scenario. Delivery plans will therefore be preceded by solid research and will only be launched with adequate and sustainable funding provision. Where specific programmes require a multi-agency approach, institutional coordination and stakeholder buy-in will be secured in advance. All programmes will be supported by continuous communication, monitoring and review activities.

Finally, we need clarity about values. As a government-led strategy, The Road to Safety has a responsibility to spell out the criteria it will be guided by when strategic priorities are set and hard choices have to be made. In practice, this means the following. While the strategy grapples with complexity, recognises the existence and validity of competing sectoral interests and works for the safety and security of all our citizens and guests, it will, wherever it can reasonably and effectively do so, give priority to the safety and mobility needs of the most disadvantaged sectors of our society, in line with government’s commitment to redistributive delivery and empowerment.

In the interests of pulling together all the dimensions of the strategic task and graphically illustrating the approach outlined above, we have constructed a map of The Road to Safety framework, which is set out below, p.23.

Outputs and outcomes
Final outcomes

The final outcomes this strategy seeks to achieve are: reduced road crashes, fatalities and injuries. The conservative targets we are aiming at are those set out in the "strategic objective" defined on p. 20 above: a minimum 5% deduction year-on-year until 2005, followed by a minimum 10% reduction year-on-year until 2009. It must be emphasised that we think these targets are currently set too low. There are two reasons for not immediately setting them higher.

Firstly, so much of what we set out to do in The Road to Safety involves qualitative restructuring of existing management, control and regulatory systems and structures that it is difficult to predict the pace at which the benefits in terms of improved vehicle fitness and driver behaviour will begin to kick in. We are certain that within the lifetime of the strategy our actions to ensure vehicle fitness, eliminate corruption and improve driver standards will have started both to improve overall vehicle safety levels and create a new layer of more safety-aware and skilled entrants to the road network. But it will take much longer to address the backlog of driving incompetence and negative attitudes amongst substantial sections of the older generations of licensed drivers. Licence suspensions, community service sentences and mandatory re-training courses for repeat traffic offenders will have an important demonstration effect, but improvements will not come overnight. So we think we will need three to five years to start getting a better sense of the overall reduction targets that can realistically be set.

Secondly, we are not yet satisfied that our current crash reporting systems and procedures, jointly carried out by the SAPS and provincial, metro and local traffic departments, are producing fully accurate and comprehensive data. We know from experience that both crash coverage and data accuracy levels have increased very considerably, though still unevenly, in tandem with the process of incorporation of the traffic and police departments of the former TVBC states into the new provincial structures, and with general improvements in provincial and local traffic authority procedures. There are still, however, a number of jurisdictions where intensive work remains to be done to get them up to speed. Mandatory use of the new Officer’s Accident Report Form, increasing familiarity with its requirements and better operational cooperation between the SAPS and provincial and local traffic authorities will help to correct these problems.

Our statistical output problem, of course, is that the nearer to 100% crash coverage we get, the "worse" the crash and fatality rates become, as measured against previous years’ (under-reported) statistics. In other words, as we get closer and closer to the goal of 100% reporting across the whole of South Africa, achieved reductions in crash and fatality rates will not reflect as positively as they should in year-on-year terms, because the base coverage is itself becoming more comprehensive each year.

We are, however, confident of reaching a crash coverage target of over 95%, with good quality data, well before 2005. This will stabilise our year-on-year comparative statistics and enable us to set upwardly revised targets with more confidence from 2005 to 2009.

These are building blocks towards better final outcomes. They include further work towards setting specific, achievable targets, though we are loath to commit ourselves to definite percentages at this stage.

The intermediate outcomes we are looking for are:

• Lower average traffic speeds (urban and rural);
• Further reductions in the proportion of over-the-limit and drug-affected drivers on our roads;
• Increased seatbelt-wearing rates;
• A general increase in adherence to the rules of the road.

• Raised general vehicle fitness standards, as measured by reductions in crashes due to specific causes such as overloading and tyre, steering and braking system failures;
• Arresting (and then beginning to reverse) the decline in the physical condition of the total road network;

The user-group outcomes we are looking for are:

• A greatly increased proportion of drivers with legitimate licences; improved driver skills and attitudes;
• A greatly increased proportion of fully fit, defensively-trained professional drivers;
• An organised, preferably self-regulated, stringently monitored road freight and public passenger transport industry;
• Sharply decreased death and injury rates for public transport passengers, pedestrians and cyclists.

In all these areas a massive amount of work remains to be done. At the same time—and going beyond our current efforts to gather comprehensive and reliable crash data—we need to greatly improve the way we assemble, manipulate and analyse the wider data sets at our disposal on drivers, vehicles, operators, traffic flows and transport movements across South Africa and its borders. These are currently fragmented across a range of agencies whose activities require urgent rationalisation and integration. At the same time, we need to draw on the assistance of our national and international partners to build and centralise more sophisticated capacity for road traffic and transport analysis, and use this to support and standardise local level data gathering activities.

We define outputs as legislative, physical, institutional, or system deliverables that will lead towards the realisation of desired intermediate and final outcomes.

Legislative outputs are simply the changes in law and regulations required to give binding effect to policy.

Physical outputs will tend to group together under the headings of infrastructure improvement (road network safety upgrades) and surveillance and enforcement technologies: deployment of breathalysers, speed guns, mobile and static cameras and weigh-in-motion devices, both from budgetary resources and in the framework of public-private sector partnerships (PPPs).

Institutional and system outputs tend to overlap. For example, we are confident that the establishment this year of the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) will start to provide the required platform for more highly coordinated inter-provincial and provincial-metro-local road traffic management systems.

By enhancing professional development, pooling resources and progressively integrating operational planning across the nine provinces of South Africa, the RTMC will give us a more predictable base for setting intermediate and user-group offence reduction targets that can effectively be met in areas such as speeding, drink/drug driving, seatbelt-wearing and commission of moving violations.

With international assistance, the RTMC will increasingly develop its internal statistical capacity over time, but in the short term there can be no further delay in completing the following activities:

• Full deployment and further development of TRAFMAN and NaTIS;
• Finalisation of more accurate crash reporting procedures and systems, including full review of the current division of responsibility between SAPS and traffic police for crash reporting and investigation and more consistent coordination between SAPS divisions and sections and provincial and local traffic authorities in respect of both routine law enforcement and crash prevention actions;
• Better integration of SAPS and traffic authority statistics and better sharing, analysis and modelling of data between NDoT, SANRAL, CSIR and Statistics South Africa;
• The creation of cooperative mechanisms linking SANRAL, provinces and local authorities that will produce comprehensive road condition audits for the entire urban and rural network.

We have already made a start in most of these areas, but the next critical step will be a concerted effort to assemble a package of accurate projections of the impact of our major safety interventions on South Africa’s economy. Current and projected spending on road safety must be determined by achieved and achievable reductions in road crash and fatality rates and must be aligned with spending to improve the condition of our roads infrastructure. This can then be translated into a full cost-benefit analysis for national treasury that makes a coherent case for increased allocation to road safety, against demonstrable savings on the social and economic costs of road crashes, deaths and injuries. Fiscal division of revenue, the current deployment of fuel levy funds and ring-fencing of provincial and local government revenue from enforcement and adjudication actions must all be revisited. The very large savings to the treasury (some R8.8 billion to date) that have been achieved by SANRAL through its BOT-based corridor development programme have created a real space for increased budgetary allocation to the agency. In short, Road safety and the supportive road infrastructure can no longer be allowed to continue as the Cinderella of national, provincial and local government budgets.

The range of outputs envisaged in The Road to Safety can be directly read off, in outline, from the Strategic Map on p. 23 above. Some of them are already in place, like the new alcohol limits, the ban on cell-phone use while driving, the new integrated school road safety curriculum and the provincial commitment in the Arrive Alive Business Plan 2000-2001 to attending to a minimum of 10 hazardous locations per province and developing supportive community-based pedestrian safety programmes.

Most of the others fall squarely into the framework of short to medium term interventions that provide the core content of our strategic objectives. We can summarily point to them from here.

We want better drivers. We will therefore implement the following actions:

• Complete the tender process for implementation of a (multi-lingual, touch-screen, audio-visual) computerised learner driver’s licence test system, with a view to minimising corruption at the first stage of the licensing process and making the system more accessible to historically disadvantaged applicants;
• Immediately upgrade the 20% of currently sub-standard Driving Licence Testing Centres (DLTCs);
• Upgrade the skills of driving licence examiners through a system of formal two-yearly re-registration tied to compulsory refresher courses;
• Expand the numbers and upgrade the capacity of the current DLTC Inspectorate, to create increased technical competency and bring strong forensic auditing skills into the system;
• Move towards an inspection regime requiring a minimum of four unannounced inspections per DLTC per annum, supported as necessary by ad hoc inspections in response to specific public complaints;
• Investigate formalising and regulating the driving school sector (including advanced driver training institutions). This would be likely to include: introducing tight accreditation criteria for owners and managers; setting clearly-defined customer service standards; establishing properly graded and differentiated skills requirements for instructors, so as to ensure effective driver training across the full range of vehicle types;
• Review the existing K-53 driving licence test system and update it where necessary to ensure that it is fully meeting real-life driving skill demands and safety awareness needs, and that manuals and procedures are culturally accessible to all applicants;
• Tighten the existing practical, theoretical and medical tests for the renewal of the Professional Driver’s Permit (PrDP);
• Ensure, through operator regulation, that professional drivers’ working hours and conditions do not militate against safe driving (fatigue etc.)
• Examine a range of sentencing options for traffic violations, including licence suspensions under the AARTO demerit points system, and—for specific grades of offence— community service sentences and/or mandatory licence re-testing.

We want safer vehicles. We will therefore implement the following actions:

• Review the operation of the entire vehicle testing system, both in terms of its ownership structure and in terms of the effectiveness of current manuals, regulatory procedures and monitoring systems. This will require the development of stringent criteria for owner/manager accreditation and registration, rigorous management standards, clearly-defined examiner competencies and appropriate levels of ongoing refresher training in vehicle safety system changes (which will be required for the compulsory two-yearly re-registration of examiners);

• Review the current operations and strength of the Vehicle Testing Station Inspectorate with a view to expanding its numbers, improving its procedures and upgrading the capacity of its inspectors—with a particular emphasis on forensic auditing and continuously upgraded technical skills;
• As with DLTCs, move towards a regime of at least four unannounced inspections per VTS per annum, plus ad hoc inspections as necessary in response to public complaints;
• In consultation with the heavy freight and public passenger transport sectors, introduce a standard Operator Code of Practice/Fleet Safety Management system which lays down stringent criteria for vehicle maintenance and safety management systems, with appropriately-scaled sanctions for transgressions, up to and including vehicle impoundment/ forfeiture for repeated or gross overloading offences and suspension or loss of operator’s card for general failure to comply with safety standards;
• Build operator consensus around the phased implementation of key vehicle safety technologies like top speed limiters and tyre safety management systems.

As the restructuring of the vehicle testing system and the strengthening of the VTS inspectorate reaches the necessary threshold of institutional capacity, move towards the phasing in of annual roadworthiness tests for all vehicles over a specified age/kilometrage still to be determined.

We will therefore implement the following actions:

• Ensure full provincial and local implementation of the new Pedestrian Facility Guidelines and the new SA Road Safety and Speed Limits Manuals.
• Support the commitment by provinces to carry out planned, continuous, multi-disciplinary upgrades of identified urban & rural hazardous locations, with community participation via democratically structured Safety Forums.
• Expand rural road upgrade/maintenance programmes nationwide—supported by systematic funding of emergent construction SMMEs—while at the same time integrating safety training into the process of improving road quality and visibility.

As you will see, running through all of these interventions is the issue of structural reform to our regulatory and enforcement institutions. Though these reforms have been presented within the context of safer drivers, vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists and infrastructure, taken together they can be said to amount to a strategic objective in their own right. The steps we intend to follow in implementing all these structural and system changes in the short term are spelt out in greater detail below, from pages 36 to 43.

Around these actions, however, lies a cluster of supportive activities—mainly belonging to the spheres of "education, communication and public participation" and "institutional reform/quality monitoring." While these will play a crucial momentum-building role in the short to medium term, they are also part of the long-term safety building process. Similarly, while some of the reform issues—like the restructuring of the inspectorates and the re-shaping of the vehicle testing regime—may require sharp institutional breaks or modifications, the system improvements and user group outcomes sought from these changes will inevitably only come through in the medium to long term, as full compliance is gradually achieved through enhanced monitoring capacity and effectively experienced sanctions.

A fuller view of the flow between short, medium and long-term actions is presented in the Intervention Table at the end of this document.

We want informed, empowered and involved communities. As we look towards the long-range elements of the strategy, we see that the sphere of "education, communication and public participation" will carry ever-increasing importance as the area in which the foundations of cultural change are laid.

While the impacts here can be quite dramatic in the short term—e.g. through effective media communications campaigns and passenger and community empowerment measures—the consolidated outcomes we are looking for are likely to be measured in school generations and decades rather than months or years.

Though the sphere of cultural change is much more difficult to subject to precise prediction and targeting, it is at least as important as the other spheres in the achievement of long term compliance. We see it this way for two main reasons:

Firstly, consent is always in general terms preferable to coercion. Secondly, South Africa’s history of coercion without consent leaves us with a powerful inherited need to ensure that meaningful forms of democratic participation are built. Without these, it will remain difficult to create the critical mass of belief in the values of civic responsibility and mutual care upon which a sustainable culture of safe road behaviour depends.

Community involvement and participation starts out from the youngest of our school children and ends with organised passengers, mobilised communities and committed road safety forums. It focuses on cooperation to overcome crime and ensure law compliance. It demands accountability from public transport operators and accessibility from road designers, infrastructure engineers and land-use planners. Its goal is to integrate active community safety organisations into every step of local planning and delivery processes, so that their voices are heard and their concerns directly addressed by officials and experts in both provincial and local government.

With this in mind, the Minister of Transport has already taken the initiative of convening a series of national consultative workshops inviting participation, input and commitment from government and industry interests and from a wide range of representative civil society organisations.

These are ongoing processes of open and critical dialogue, both on policy priorities and on what the various groupings can commit to, in terms of sponsorship, coordinated support activities and organised actions by communities that can help them to take full charge of their own safety. (These include, for example, such issues as safety-conscious spatial planning, pedestrian safety measures on urban and rural roads, community actions to reduce the threat of stray animals, identification of unroadworthy public passenger vehicles and further initiatives on public transport passenger empowerment).

The Minister has also been encouraging the extension of this consultative process to the provincial and local government sphere, via additional workshops hosted by the nine MECs for Transport and supported by the participation of the six major Metropolitan Mayors located in the provinces of Gauteng, KZN, Free State, Eastern and Western Cape).

Their task would be to introduce the national strategic framework, clarify the most effective forms of cooperation between provincial and local government and identify the necessary mechanisms and funding resources for local community involvement in road safety programmes. Some of the key focal areas under consideration are:

• Pedestrian safety;
• Cyclist safety (in the broad context of the national Shova Lula bicycle programme—see box);
• Understanding and observance of road signs;
• Commuter vigilance, reporting and preventative action.

In parallel with these initiatives, the Minister of Transport has also opened up a process of continuous interaction with the major transport industry role-players - minibus taxi, bus, coach and freight operators and transport trade unions - aimed at developing a culture of joint responsibility for the improvement of safety in all areas of operation.

Important strides have already been made in integrating road safety awareness education into the mainstream school curriculum as a set of basic life skills that can be continuously expanded and deepened over time.

The implementation of road safety education has been planned and prepared in great detail by task teams from the Departments of Transport and Education. From 2001 all learners from pre-school level through to Grade 9 will be exposed to systematic, practical road safety education within the framework of the "life-skills" component of Curriculum 21. The NDoT will have all the required learning materials for Grades 10, 11 and 12 ready by 2002, but these modules will only be introduced within the implementation time-frame set by the Department of Education: 2003 for Grade 10, 2004 for Grade 11 and 2005 for Grade 12.

Much time, money and effort has been invested in the new approach, through the development of educational materials tailored to meet the practical, real-life demands of outcomes-based learning. Road safety education will start at the lowest level possible (pre-school age) and will continue up through all the schooling phases on a continually expanding and deepening basis (e.g. from simply being visible and crossing a street safely to the ability to drive vehicles in a fully responsible manner).

To further extend the road safety educational cycle, the Minister of Transport will meet with tertiary institutions to request them to begin a process of collaboration with the task teams of the Departments of Transport and Education to devise road safety educational components that will become an integral part of the tertiary education process, linked to career and skills development training for the world of work.

A considerable amount of preparatory work has gone into aligning the Department’s educational and training initiatives with the Sector Skills Plan of the TETA and looking at ways in which these can be jointly developed and fast-tracked, with special reference to building capacity in government and overcoming historical disadvantage.

As the five TETA Chambers – for the Aviation, Maritime, Freight, Passenger and Taxi sectors – consolidate themselves, the Department will play an integral role in their activities. Obviously, from a road safety point of view, the Freight, Passenger and Taxi Chambers are the important arenas of involvement.

The Taxi Chamber, in particular, represents an entirely new initiative, driven by the Department with a view to formalising training support to the industry. An Interim Steering Committee for the body has been set up and is currently in the process of evaluating nominations to serve on its Management Committee. Once this process is completed and a mechanism for the payment of a levy by operators is agreed, the Chamber will formally be launched. It will then be possible to release support funding from the National Skills Fund.

In all three road transport-related Chambers it is envisaged that education and training will be focussed both on business skills and the development of a better understanding of the operational and safety-related aspects of technological innovation in the motor vehicle industry.

In the preceding pages we have repeatedly emphasised the need for inter-governmental and cross-sectoral coordination of interventions, including the creation of effective mechanisms for sustained private sector and community participation.

The diagram that follows offers a graphical representation of the interactions between political structures—Cabinet, Parliament and Mincom—and oversight and implementing structures—RTSB, implementing departments, agencies and other crucial stakeholder groupings.

The Strategy Development Group is the only element in the structure that is not a permanent feature of the delivery process, having been assigned the specific, time-limited task of formulating a new road safety strategy for South Africa through the consultative process described in the preceding pages. With the publication of this document, The Road to Safety, its formal role comes to an end. But since its participants were drawn from a number of other structures represented in the diagram, they continue to play active management roles in these structures, from which secondment to a reconfigured Strategy Management Group will be possible. It is envisaged that such a Group should be constituted as soon as the current restructuring process with respect to COTO sub-committees is completed.

Finally, it is worth noting that the links between the category "Stakeholder Groups" in the diagram are both vertical (to national structures) and—probably more importantly—horizontal: to provincial and local government authorities and Community Road Safety Forums. These linkages represent the crucial terrain of sponsorship, public-private and community partnerships.

In the pages that follow the Management Diagram, it will be seen that the short to medium term implementation steps that we set out do not include costing details. Though considerable work has already been done to ensure that we are in fact able to deliver on everything we say we are going to do, we need to retain an element of flexibility with regard to how we deploy our resources between the various areas of intervention. We have taken the view that to publicly assign definite figures to each intervention would constrain our room for manoeuvre to an unacceptable degree. In effect, what we are saying is: we need the flexibility to make creative shifts of direction with regard to resource mobilisation and expenditure management over the full five-year term of the strategy. Judge the strategy on its outputs and outcomes.

• NDoT will commit funding to provinces to support the immediate upgrade of a prioritised list of critical / strategic DLTCs in each province. The process will be implemented through formal output-based contracts between each province and the NdoT.
• Provinces will be expected to complete the process of getting the remaining non-compliant DLTCs within their jurisdictions up to full compliance within a further one-year period.

• The NDoT will amend the National Road Traffic Act and/or Regulations, as required, to:

• Geographically bind DLTCs;
• Introduce annual re-registration of DLTCs tied to technical (and, where necessary) forensic inspection;
• Introduce 2-yearly re-registration of examiners, linked to clean record and completion of appropriate refresher course.

• The NDoT will review regulations governing K-53 test procedures and work with Technikons and SAQA to design a professional qualification and refresher course structure for examiners.
• Compulsory changes to procedures and examiner training requirements will be phased in as soon as the new qualifications and structures are finalised.

This workshop will address four key issues:

2. The creation of a national oversight body for driver training/examination:

This will be composed of representatives of all major driver education and examination interests, and would perform the function of monitoring and/or managing the practical execution of SA driver training and examination systems. [This body could well become a functional unit of the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC)]

3. Driving licence examination reform

• Review of learner’s licence theory test to ensure that proper emphasis is being placed on improving the safety of newly qualified riders and drivers by making them think carefully about the right attitudes needed to drive safely on our busy and dangerous roads.

Areas of assessment to be reviewed will include: driver attitude; new traffic signs and regulations; effects of alcohol, drugs and fatigue on driver behaviour; safety and environmental aspects of vehicles.

• Revision of the K-53 practical test, to emphasise safe driving and knowledge of the Highway Code (as demonstrated by the applicant’s driving).

The administration of the test will be examined to ensure that there are sufficiently clear guidelines for:

• test routes – these must be as uniform as possible and include a range of typical road and traffic conditions; and
• test procedures – applicants must be given directions in good time and required to complete a series of set exercises, including turning in the road, reversing around a corner, reverse parking, carrying out an emergency stop and starting on an incline.
• Examination of the requirements for an extended practical test (re-test) for drivers who have been disqualified upon conviction for dangerous driving offences or other offences involving obligatory disqualification [Such a test would be envisaged as being longer than the standard test (± 70 minutes, as opposed to ± 40 minutes) and more demanding (covering a wide variety of roads, and traffic situations, usually including dual carriageways).]

• Introduction of a graduated driving licence, with specific restrictive conditions, for first-time drivers.

2. Formalisation / regulation of driving schools: capacity building and SMME development
3. Formalisation / regulation of driving schools: capacity building and SMME development

• Investigate and consider the feasibility of:

• Carrying out a comprehensive audit of all existing driving schools;
• Setting criteria for driving school accreditation/registration and developing a compulsory Code of Conduct;
• Defining minimum facility and service standards;
• Developing accredited driving school instructors’ training courses and formal criteria for registration/re-registration of instructors.
• Promoting development of supportive business training for historically disadvantaged entrants to the industry.

2. Tightening of PrDP requirements

• Introduce compulsory practical test into 2-yearly renewal of the PrDP.
• Examine options for stricter pass criteria for professional drivers.
• Investigate making 4-yearly completion of an accredited advanced/defensive driver-training course compulsory.
• Introduce a new, stricter annual medical examination, checking for substance abuse and latent medical conditions that can lead to unsafe driving.

Purpose: to minimise human intervention - and hence opportunities for fraud - at the critical first stage of the licensing process, allowing anti-corruption resources to be more sharply concentrated on the application of the K-53 test. The other major advantage of the computerised learner’s test is that it is user-friendly and much more accessible to disadvantaged learners, with a simplified graphical interface and a facility for audio access to questions in all 11 national languages]

• The national tender for the system will be awarded during 2001.
• The successful contractor will be initially required to set up 9 pilot sites (one per province) for a 6-month test period, to be followed by full rollout to all compliant DLTCs nationally by mid-2002.
• During 2002 the system will become compulsory for DLTC registration and for all new applicants for the learner’s licence.

• The NDoT will complete negotiations with private sector telecommunications service providers to set up a central free-phone complaint line to enable the general public and public transport passengers to report operator and driver safety violations and corrupt practices at DLTCs and VTSs. The National Call Centre will have hot-links to SAPS and traffic enforcement authorities and will be the central reporting point for violations of the Passenger’s Charter, which will have to be displayed in all buses, coaches and minibus taxis from 2002.
• Staffing, infrastructure, operational procedures and a public communication plan will be finalised in the months running up to the projected launch of the Call Centre.

• National Consultation Process

Led by the Minister, the aim is to gain collective ownership of the strategy and chart key areas of practical cooperation between government, business and civil society that can be used to build safety consciousness and create effective networks and channels for grass roots public participation. Key areas of focus are community ownership of pedestrian safety, empowerment of public transport passengers and the mobilisation of general public vigilance with regard to fraud, corruption and dangerous vehicle usage on our roads.

• Provincial Consultation Process

Provincial Workshops, under the leadership of the respective MECs and Mayors, will then further develop the process, via Action Plans to be implemented at metro, district and local council levels.

• An analysis has already begun, addressing issues of ownership structure, legal framework, institutional arrangements, examiner training & registration standards, management processes, information flows, manuals / codes of practice and testing procedures].
• A Report on all key issues will be produced by a joint working group of NDoT and co-opted technical specialists, supported by committed representatives of the VTS industry, for submission to MINCOM.
• The NDoT will make a final decision on industry restructuring options, oversee the implementation of new manuals/codes of practice and work with Technikons and SAQA to design basic professional qualifications and refresher courses for VTS examiners.
• The NDoT will then regulate to phase in compulsory changes to equipment requirements, management systems, procedures & training standards.
• The medium term objective is to phase in annual roadworthiness testing for all vehicles over a specified age / kilometrage, as soon as the VTS industry and Inspectorate are strong enough to sustain the new system. It is expected that annual testing will begin to be implemented during the lifetime of this strategy.

1. Regulation of Road Freight / Public Passenger Transport Operators

• The Minister will initiate a formal consultation process with freight and public passenger transport operators’ associations and drivers’ unions on the design and implementation of a standard National Code of Practice / Fleet Safety Management Plan. The aim is to strive for industry self-regulation wherever possible, but to back this up by compulsion where necessary in respect of safety-critical issues and by an effective inspection, monitoring and enforcement regime.
• A joint working group of government, operator and union representatives will be formed. With the support of technical standards and legal experts, it will be required to report back to the Minister and MINCOM in 6 months with draft recommendations on:

• The content and application of the Operator Code of Practice / Fleet Safety Management Plan.

• Fixing of public transport customer service standards/ definition of Passenger’s Charter rights for compulsory display in vehicles.
• Tightened PrDP test, extended medical examination by an accredited practititioner and safety awareness/ defensive driving requirements.
• Acceptable norms to govern driver working hours and conditions (in consultation with Dept. of Labour and industry bargaining forums).

• Discussions are already under way with the road freight and public passenger transport industry on:

• Development of standards for top speed limiters;
• Tyre fitness measures: appropriate tyre quality, rating and inflation to be included in Operator Code of Practice; additional consultation on compulsory implementation of specialised tyre monitoring and anti-blow-out devices.
• Fitment of electronic onboard overload control monitors to be investigated.
• Public communication programme on tyre safety/ maintenance to be run during 2002.

• Guarantee basic operational funding:

Ensure that agreed financial contributions are paid to the National Overload Control Fund, and that distribution is strategic and fair.

• Reformulate National Overload Control Strategy [NOCS]

NDoT to work with the CSIR, SANRAL and provincial traffic authorities to produce revised NOCS, with proposals for operational & funding changes. Main focal points:

• Overall funding strategy
• Optimal use of existing Traffic Control Centres (TCCs).
• A systematic operational strategy to implement inter-provincial and cross-border enforcement actions.
• Intensified deployment of new weigh-in-motion technologies & development of standards to secure their evidential viability in court.
• Expanded use of PPPs to manage and maintain strategic TCCs and install and operate weigh-in-motion sensor systems.
• Investigation into the possibility of amending the Road Traffic Act to lower the current 56-ton gross combination mass limit currently in force in South Africa to reduce road damage, increase the unit cost of road freight and, in so doing, create a price incentive for certain categories of customer to switch from road to rail.

[Note: From a road traffic safety perspective it is acknowledged that the longer and the heavier a vehicle is, the more significant its impact on the infrastructure and on fellow road users: passing time, stopping distances, negotiation of corners, impact on free flow of traffic and consequences in the event of an accident].

• Investigation into the viability of impoundment and forfeiture of vehicles belonging to operators convicted of repeated or gross overloading.

• All nine provinces mandated to work with local government and communities to implement a rolling programme of identification and prioritisation of hazardous pedestrian locations and apply multi-disciplinary solutions involving:

• Mandatory implementation of the Pedestrian Facility Guidelines, Road Safety & Speed Limits Manuals.
• Targeted engineering solutions.
• School and community-based education in safe traffic participation.
• Implementation of a nationwide reflective bands programme for schoolchildren, with private sector support.

• NDoT/CSIR Joint Working Group to extend support for rolling provincial-metro-local pedestrian actions identified and agreed in the National Pedestrian Workshop, Jan 2001.

Main features:

• Training of government and local authority officials and community members.
• Community needs assessments, planning, implementation and evaluation.
• Community-driven safety processes, participatory educational methods and technologies.
• Partnership development with private sector and NGOs on national, provincial, metro and local levels.

Pedestrian programmes to be aligned with:

• Publicity for new schools Road Safety Curriculum.
• National Road Safety Week activities.
• Shova Lula National Bicycle Transport Project.

• NDoT to produce a plan for the establishment of an increased number of Inspector posts on the Departmental budget. (Provisionally estimated at 5 additional posts per year over four years).
• NDoT to set up a workgroup including technical experts and Technikon and SAQA representatives to:

• Analyse shortfalls in the capacity of the current Inspectorate to meet inspection requirements across the country and design appropriate professional qualifications for the Inspectorate;
• Finalise and accredit a new modular DLTC Inspector’s Diploma and create the required course delivery structures;
• Develop criteria and a delivery framework for periodic refresher courses for re-registration of DLTC examiners.

• Full Inspector’s Diploma to become a pre-requisite for new inspector appointments; retrospective modular training to be mandatory for existing inspectors.
• As capacity allows, move to an annual re-registration regime for DLTCs linked to the phasing in of a cycle of more regular and stringent inspections [Target: minimum of 4 formal inspections per DLTC per annum + ad hoc inspections as required].

• NDoT to critically review the location, human and technical resources and operational procedures of the current Vehicle Testing Station Inspectorate.
• Identify new training requirements, starting out from basic training in SABS 0216 and 047 procedures, supplemented by ISO 5000 standards + special courses on brakes, steering and suspension.
• NDoT to work with CSIR, Technikons, SAQA and industry role-players to:

• Finalise a new modular VTS Inspector’s Diploma (based on revised manuals / codes and procedures and including specific technical and HR competencies);
• With assistance from the NDPP, create a group of specialist forensic auditors to root out fraud and deliberate non-compliance and transfer skills to the Inspectorate;
• Create course delivery options and a career structure for the profession;
• Develop criteria and a delivery framework for periodic refresher courses for re-registration of VTS examiners.

• Full Inspector’s Diploma to become a pre-requisite for new inspector appointments; retrospective modular training to become mandatory for existing inspectors.

• As capacity allows, move to annual re-registration of VTSs linked to phasing in of a cycle of regular & stringent inspections. [Target: minimum 4 inspections per VTS per annum + ad hoc inspections as required].
• Investigate amending legislation to empower inspectors to immediately suspend or close down non-compliant or corrupt VTSs and conduct law enforcement actions for vehicle roadworthiness.
• Equip the Inspectorate with mobile vehicle testing stations to carry out roadside checks.

• Minister of Transport to consult with Minister of Justice and NDPP to look for means of finalising the existing backlog of traffic cases in the courts and rationalising sentencing.

Main requirements:

• Dedicated traffic courts in all major population centres, backed up by much wider deployment of mobile traffic courts to provide effective coverage of targeted stretches of national and provincial road countrywide.
• A programme of workshops to persuade prosecutors and magistrates to impose more uniform and severe sentences for serious traffic offences.
• A public communication campaign to build consensus for stiffer penalties.
• Creation of special capacity to prosecute effectively in technically complex overloading cases.

• Cooperation with the NDPP / Scorpions to set up a specialist team of forensic auditors to support the Driver Licensing and vehicle Testing Inspectorates.
• Full implementation of coordinated inter-provincial enforcement through the consolidation of the Road Traffic Management Corporation during the lifetime of the strategy.
• Full implementation of the AARTO administrative adjudication, fine collection and points demerit system through the consolidation of the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) during the lifetime of the strategy.
• Public / private partnerships to support the implementation and maintenance of increased numbers of static surveillance cameras and other forms of offence detection technology.

The implementation grid that follows (from p. 44) includes both a summary of the short to medium term interventions outlined above and the further supporting and extending actions necessary to knit together the elements of the matrix represented in the Strategic Map (p. 25 above).

The grid exactly follows the logic of the Strategic Map, with each action described taking its place within the structure given by the categories Road Environment - Road User - Vehicle and the intervention areas Standards & Rules - Compliance (Enforcement + Education, Communication & Public Participation) - Institutional Reform/Quality Monitoring.

In this way, the aim has been to achieve the maximum possible coherence between the various sub-actions of the strategy as they unfold along short to medium or medium to long-term time-lines.

SUMMARY: PROPOSED ROAD SAFETY INTERVENTIONS TO 2005
[PMG Ed note: Summary table not included]