The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the statement issued yesterday by the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC). Albeit perhaps unintentionally, it has served to clear up a number of points of confusion and demonstrate just how deceptively the Department of Transport and RTMC have portrayed road death roll statistics both this year and in the past. Amongst other things, it is now clear, following yesterday's statement, that:

• The Department of Transport pulled precisely the same trick last year - prompting the media to compare preliminary figures from December 2008 with final figures from December 2007, with the upshot that press coverage depicted a three times greater improvement in the situation than had actually taken place.
• By repeating the con this time around, the Department and RTMC created the impression that a 22% decrease in road deaths had been recorded; in actual fact, without final figures available, it is impossible to safely assert whether an increase or decrease has been recorded, and using preliminary figures from the same time last year it seems likely that the situation has in fact deteriorated.

The statement issued by the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) yesterday claims that "the statistics ... released on 4 January 2009 [which have been cited in the press] did not include the accident report forms that were still in progress, coming through from the various Police Stations." In other words, the RTMC claims that the 937 figure, widely quoted as the total number of road deaths in December 2008, was in fact not a final figure -- and that it is now using the final figure for December 2008 instead of a preliminary one.

That may be so, but if it is the case it merely raises two serious questions that the DoT and RTMC need to answer:

First, why did the Department of Transport, on 5 January last year, state that the total number of road deaths for December 2008 stood at 937 if that was still a preliminary, incomplete figure? At no stage did they indicate that this figure should not be taken as a final tally. Indeed, their statement was even entitled "Visible Traffic Policing Improves Safety on our Roads" - a claim that could never be made for incomplete data.

The obvious answer to this question is revealed by the response that the statement prompted in the press. With no reason to treat the figures provided as anything other than the correct final tabulation for, the press duly went about comparing the 937 figure with final figures from the previous year, December 2007, when 1,535 deaths were recorded. The upshot was that instead of depicting a slight improvement of just 13%, the press reported on a 39% improvement.

In other words, last year the Department of Transport conned the public and the press into comparing final figures from December 2007 and preliminary figures from December 2008 -- giving the impression that we had seen a three times greater improvement than had actually occurred.

Here is just a sample of some of the positive press coverage generated by the Department of Transport by incorrectly comparing preliminary and final figures last year:

Second, and more importantly still, the RTMC yesterday claimed that by 5 January 2009, only preliminary data from December 2008 could be provided, and that, last year, final figures could only be calculated and released publicly much later in January. The Department of Transport has also indicated in the press that the minister will release final figures from December 2009 later in the month. But these two facts only make it clear that the figure released on 2 January 2010 by the Department of Transport should also only be taken as preliminary, and that, as a preliminary figure, it ought not be compared to last year's final tally, lest we repeat precisely the same mistake.

Which means that when, on 2 January this year, the Minister of Transport issued a statement on this very matter, he was again comparing preliminary figures for December with final figures for the previous year. The upshot was that the press reported on a 22% improvement, when in fact, if we compare like-for-like, and use both sets of preliminary figures, we are in fact presented with a 16% deterioration.

So the question is this: what evidence is there that the minister was not, once again, trying to pull the wool over our eyes?

We will take this matter up in the portfolio committee, and ensure that the public obtains accurate data from the Department on this barometer of road safety policy performance, and to ensure that the money appropriated for these programmes is spent wisely.