Latest statistics reveal that children under the age of 18 years are twice as likely to be killed on South African roads, than any other part of the world. This is according to the recent study by Aliasgher Janmohammed, Project Manager for the Prevention of Injuries Impacting Children in South Africa, a UNICEF project managed by Childsafe in collaboration with the University of Cape Town.
“It’s truly disturbing that our children are being killed on our roads like this,” he remarked during his presentation: Analysing Road Fatalities Impacting Children aged 0-17 In The Case of Gauteng: A Three-Year Analysis during the 2018 Southern African Transport Conference (SATC), which is taking place at the CSIR International Convention Centre in Pretoria this week.
Elaborating on the findings, he said children are at risk because of their comparatively reduced cognitive abilities. “When children cross roads in South Africa, they do not look out for traffic. And when they do, it’s often in the wrong direction,” he said.
He explained that many children in South Africa walk to access education, public transport or to return home. Findings on access to education indicated that 62% of children took longer than 15 minutes to get to school, meaning that children in South Africa spend a lot of time on the roads which increases their chances of being killed on them.
He stated that males are three to four times more likely to be killed on the road than females. Therefore, areas with greater male populations are considered especially high-risk areas.
Analysis of road fatality data for Gauteng suggests that children aged 0 – 17 years constituted seven percent of all road fatalities between 2015 and 2017. Over the three-year period of the analyses, the fatalities impacting children increased by 37%. Child pedestrians constituted the majority in each of the three years, followed by child passengers.
“Gauteng has an extremely high number of child road fatalities – almost as much as the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal – even though it is far smaller geographically,” Janmohammed pointed out.
The findings further suggest that Gauteng roads are becoming more dangerous for children every year. And alarmingly, while the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2020 goal is to reduce road traffic fatalities and road injuries by 50%, South Africa’s statistics in this regard are not decreasing, let alone halving. In fact, over the three-year period analysed, child fatality rates in the country increased.
He explained that the majority of child road fatalities occur during the week, although the rate of fatalities is higher over weekends. Children are also being killed primarily after school i.e. from 1pm to 6pm.
“After-school activities are placing our children at great risk. We need to establish what these activities are and why children are having difficulties when using the roads.”
He said South Africa’s roads needed to cater better to pedestrian users and that the country needed localised road safety interventions.
Source: IOL Motoring