How to stay safe on the roads this Easter

“Wear your seat belts, reduce speed, buckle up babies and children, don’t text while driving instead use your hands-free kit and your voice to give instructions to your phone.” 

These are some of the pieces of advice given by Transport Minister Barbara Creecy, to motorists and road users ahead of the Easter long weekend which is characterised by high traffic volumes as people travel to various destinations and the religious community traveling to places of pilgrimage.

“We have a pandemic of brain injuries of young children in our country caused by the impact of motor vehicle accidents. Babies don’t belong in your arms, they belong in a baby seat and children also belong in a special seat and must be strapped in.

“If you suffer from chronic diseases, please take your medication with you, take it regularly. We know that some of these chronic illnesses cause fatigue. If traveling long distances, stop every two hours, avoid driving at night, and reduce speed. It’s going to rain. The roads are going to be slippery and before you leave, check your tires, check your brakes, check your windscreen wipers, check your lights and your tail lights and your indicator lights. These small checks can save your life,” Creecy said. 

A significant spike in traffic volumes is expected on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning as travellers head to holiday destinations and places of worship to commemorate the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.

Creecy said that the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape, and Limpopo provinces account for more than 76% of road accidents and deaths.

“80% of accidents in our country are caused by human error, such as speeding, texting while driving, fatigue, driving under the influence of alcohol, walking on highways and across highways both as sober and not so-sober pedestrians — all of these are major factors in road accidents,” she said.

She added that most of the serious accidents and fatalities occur on Friday nights and Saturday nights, particularly between the times of 6pm and 8pm. 

Creecy said there will be increased police visibility, particularly late at night and in the early hours of the morning, when recklessness and driver misbehaviour are most prevalent. It is now up to every road user to do their part to reduce road deaths as we believe that road safety is everyone’s responsibility, she said. 

“We continue to have high volumes of pedestrian involvement in accidents; almost 40% of those killed in motor vehicle accidents in our country are pedestrians. We urge motorists to plan routes carefully, especially considering that unfortunately we are expecting heavy rainfall throughout the Easter weekend, and we know that heavy rainfall is an important factor in promoting more road accidents,” she said.

Preliminary fatality figures for the first three months of the year 2025 indicate a significant reduction in accidents and fatalities, however, at the same time there are still far too many transgressors, Creecy said.

She added that the Department of Transport, road entities, provincial and local government departments, law enforcement authorities, interfaith organisations, community-based structures, the private sector, the liquor industry, the taxi industry, and public opinion influencers have joined forces to work together to encourage drivers to behave more responsibly on the roads and to ensure that human error is removed as a factor in road accidents. 

“Now, because this campaign #ItBeginsWithMe involves all of us, we are asking motorists to use our social media platforms to post messages, indicating that they’ve traveled safely as we believe this will inspire others to modify their behavior and avoid crashes,” Creecy said.

Simon Zwane, spokesperson for the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) said there will be heightened monitoring of traffic movement and operations at toll gates and⁠ interventions will be made when the situation calls for them to avoid congestion and ensure smooth traffic flow.

Zwane added that traffic officers will be deployed on the major routes on a 24-hour basis with regular stops and checking of vehicles.

“We will be conducting joint law enforcement operations with the SAPS, provincial and municipal authorities to deal with issues such as drunk driving, speeding, and the roadworthiness of vehicles. Jointly, we will be maintaining high visibility on the routes to deal with rogue driver behaviour and to remove pedestrians from the roads,” Zwane said.

Zwane pleaded with motorists to plan their trips carefully to avoid night travel and check the weather focus before setting off. Zwane added that some filling stations on major routes have allowed RTMC to use their rest stops for long-distance drivers to take a break.

Mmatshikhidi Rebecca Phala, national spokesperson for the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) said taxi patrollers will be visible countrywide working closely with law enforcement to oversee safe driving conditions by all taxi drivers, oversee road stoppages and compliance by taxis, drivers, and commuters. 

“Much more heightened work will be on the N1 and R101 in Limpopo because the ZCC churches will be having their Easter pilgrimages after the closures dating back to Covid-19 lockdown times which effectively means traffic volumes will be increased,” Phala said. 

She added that Santaco has been visiting especially long-distance and cross-border operations taxi ranks checking for vehicle compliance and removing any vehicle found with errors including outdated licensing documentation, smooth tyres, and missed vehicle maintenance and/or servicing.

“The directive is that long-distance taxi marshals will not allow commuters to load too much luggage because that is one of the core causes of overloading in our taxis. In some of our long-distance taxi ranks, operators have decided to use trailers to ensure enough packing of luggage so commuters sit comfortably and are not submerged by heavy luggage. 

“The biggest clarion call though is for everyone to try as much as possible to travel light to avoid discomfort and overloading. The patrollers who will be stationed outside of taxi ranks will be looking out for any possible overloading that may happen outside the taxi ranks and extra commuters found on a taxi will be immediately removed and returned to the rank to find a suitable seat. This will be undertaken closely with law enforcement agencies,” Phala said. 

She added that taxi drivers are encouraged to take frequent rests and that taxi associations will oversee the availability of temporary drivers to help relieve the main drivers and ensure that they get time to rest in between trips. 

Dr Lee Randall, a founding member of the Road Ethics Project, a non-profit organisation advocating for ethical road use, said that all road users should be wide awake to South Africa’s road death and injury rate being way above that of most other middle-income countries.

She added that whenever people take to the roads, whether in vehicles or on foot or by cycling, whether on an ordinary day or during a special season like Easter – they face a chance of being injured or dying in a crash.

“Ideally, every adult road user must know the rules of the road and be law-abiding, sober, not distracted and neither impaired by ill-health or medication side-effects nor overly fatigued. And adults must look after the road safety needs of children and other vulnerable people such as the elderly and people with disabilities,” Randall said.

Randall added that the country’s National Road Safety Strategy rests on Vision Zero and the Safe System Approach to road safety, which is in line with global best practices. However, Randall said, SA is not sufficiently training policymakers, officials, road users, and the public at large in what this actually means and how it should shape our thinking and interventions. 

“For instance, fundamental principles of the Safe System Approach are that human beings are physically vulnerable to force (and will die if exposed to very high forces such as can happen during road crashes) and human beings are fallible and prone to errors. 

“Since it’s ethically unacceptable that errors lead to high levels of death and serious injury, our system needs to be more forgiving of those errors and set up in such a way as to reduce the chances of them happening. We still see, in South Africa, a huge tendency to blame crashes on human factors without looking deeper at how the broader system shapes that behaviour,” she said.

Our roads need to be more self-guiding, automatically encouraging people to engage in safe behaviours and avoid unsafe ones, and we need to look at making more use of safety features that have been proven all over the world to reduce crashes, injuries, and deaths, Randall added. 

“For example, we have high crash rates on undivided highways and rural roads, whereas other countries will at least separate the traffic going in opposite directions with something like a wire rope barrier,” Randall said. 

gcwalisile.khanyile@inl.co.za