4 August 2000
Arrive Alive is on the move and on a road near you. Permanently. Seven days a week, 24-hours a day. This was the message spelt out by Minister Dullah Omar and the nine provincial Transport MEC's after a two-day strategic session north of Pretoria this week.
Arrive Alive - In adopting the Business Plan for Arrive Alive 2000-2001, the summit gave the green light to the transformation of the well-known seasonal enforcement and communication campaign into its new, permanent form. So while Arrive Alive will continue to focus its attention on the critical offences of speeding, drinking and driving and failing to wear seatbelts, there will be some key shifts of emphasis.
Officers in mobile patrols and at roadblocks will be adopting a zero tolerance approach to driver fitness, vehicle fitness and illegal documentation and will step up prosecutions for reckless driving and other moving violations like crossing barrier lines. There will be greatly increased deployment of static cameras to monitor drivers failing to stop at intersections or jumping red traffic lights, and increased use of private sector support to operate these facilities and give logistical support to the rapid processing of notices and summonses - thus freeing up more officers for on-the-road enforcement duties.
The reorganisation of the logistics of Arrive Alive has proved to be the key issue. In its new form, Arrive Alive is now fully geared to implement a data-driven, corridor-focussed approach. Put simply, this means: we know what the key factors are that cause crashes and deaths on our roads; we know where and when they mostly occur; and we know which types of vehicles are mostly involved. Following from this, a planning approach has been developed which prioritises and concentrates resources around the single major goal of crash reduction. Each province is committed to producing a month-by-month timetable of planned and coordinated mobile patrols and static roadblocks focussed on known hazardous locations and high-crash stretches of the country's urban, inter-urban and provincial roads network.
Key crash red-spots have been identified in every magisterial district and enforcement resources will be deployed at these spots when it matters most – i.e. on those days of the week and at those times of day or night which statistics have shown to be the key danger periods. Roadblocks will be "randomly" rotated to ensure maximum unpredictability and minimise driver evasion tactics. In support of these enforcement measures, provincial and local authorities have been instructed to carry out continuous infrastructure audits and take rapid action to upgrade hazardous locations through low-cost engineering, road environment and signage measures.
Overloading - In addition, special attention will be given to the issue of overloading, which plays such a negative role both in terms of public passenger transport safety and damage to the road network. Freight, bus and minibus taxi operators can expect rigorous attention to be given to overloading offences, both at roadblocks and at traffic control centres (TCCs). At the ministerial workshop, MECs gave a renewed commitment to channel provincial budgetary resources into the National Overload Control Fund in order to continue the expansion process which has seen 16 new TCCs built and 11 existing facilities upgraded since 1996. At the same, the workshop fully recognised the scale of the freight overloading problem, which involves both domestic and very significant cross-border transport flows. The Ministers noted that a sustainable long-term solution to the problem requires a level of investment in both physical installations and staffing that cannot be borne by the state alone, and therefore gave the Committee of Land Transport Officials (COLTO) the urgent task of exploring all available avenues for building effective public-private partnerships in this area.
Pedestrian safety - Finally, and as an integral part of the new Arrive Alive, a special drive is being launched on the critical issue of pedestrian safety. The key challenge here is to dramatically reduce pedestrian deaths on South Africa's roads from the current level of over 40% of all road fatalities. But it is clearly understood that policing pedestrian behaviour can only have a relatively minor impact on a much bigger and more complex set of problems which have their historical roots in environmental poverty, inadequate roadside infrastructure, distorted spatial development, bad land use planning and indifference to community involvement. The clear way forward, which as been built into Arrive Alive, is to adopt a multi-disciplinary, people-centred approach driven, planned and delivered at provincial and local level, with maximum community participation.
The key issues are:
As a first step, provinces have committed themselves, in the 2000-2001 Business Plan, to developing and implementing at least 10 community road safety management programmes/ projects in identified high-priority red-spots, drawing on the support of national and local businesses for additional support and sponsorship.
However, perhaps the most important aspect of the new Arrive Alive is that implementing authorities and officers will be judged not on how good their paper plans were, but on their measurable outputs in terms of reducing crashes and consequent road deaths in their areas of jurisdiction.
Strategy 2000-2004 - In the background, meanwhile, the development of Strategy 2000-2004 continues. When it is finalised - which is expected to be before the end of this year - it will provide the over-arching framework for short, medium and long term interventions which will allow all those involved in the delivery of road traffic quality and safety to get to grips with the key underlying issues in a phased, systematic, incremental set of steps. In this scenario, Arrive Alive is freed up to get on with its enforcement and communication activities as the operational arm of Strategy 2000-2004 while the strategy becomes the home for short, medium and long term structural solutions.
Its key focal areas are:
The discussion document issued in May this year as a first cut at framing a comprehensive road safety strategy for South Africa has already provided a road map of the short-to-medium and medium-to-long term issues that will have to be addressed in order to create the systematic, ordered, multi-level approach to road safety that we all want to see. The document was enthusiastically received by the vast majority of stakeholders and has given rise to a large volume of positive and helpful feedback. Intensive work is now being done to extract and give shape to a short term implementation plan which will address the most burning issues around law compliance and driver, vehicle and operator fitness, with a particular emphasis on public passenger transport safety.
The ministerial workshop reviewed a draft outline of suggested short term actions in these areas and mandated the Committee of Land Transport Officials (COLTO) to complete of the final set of recommendations - together with proposed legislative and regulatory amendments - for presentation at the next Transport inter-Ministerial Meeting in October. The overriding aim will be to ensure that the various actions will be complementary, effective, and implementable; and that they will help to empower all those who prepared to commit themselves to making a difference.
As Minister Omar has put it: "We in South Africa are still teenagers in the building of a functioning democracy and strong participatory governance. I am confident that Strategy 2000-2004 and Arrive Alive, taken together, are providing us with a learning path towards a coming of age in the matter of how we use our roads, protect our resources and respect each other's needs and rights. Then it's up to each of us to internalise these challenges, assume full responsibility for our actions and make road safety a lifelong commitment."
ISSUED BY
Mike Mabasa
Media Liaison Officer to the Minister of Transport
Pretoria
Tel: 083 680 7048