Feedback from the SATC 2022 decade of action for road safety 2021-2030 workshop

Abstract

A workshop was held during SATC 2022, to clarify the role that civil society, academia,NGO’s and the private sector in South Africa could play in support of the Decade of Action for Road Safety during the current campaign until 2030. The recommended actions in the Global Plan in the South African context were presented with specific focus on non-governmental participation. Eleven presenters were tasked to share their views of the respective focus areas from the non-governmental sector. They shared road safety good practice involvement applied by the non-government sector. The purpose was to stimulate other role players to take road safety action. Thay also explored synergies among stakeholders in order to strengthen future road safety actions. Some of high lights of the presentations are summarised below.The multimodal transport discussion highlighted that minibus taxis (and buses) carry a high percentage of traffic and contribute to a high number of fatalities. There are 25 000 schools in the country with 13 million learners. Focus must be to create the next generation of responsible road users. Speak to the school children, they walk to and from school every day, they will identify the roads and intersections that are the most dangerous for them.Road infrastructure is an important focus area for the reduction of road fatalities and injuries. Appropriate data is needed to guide infrastructure improvements. This includes the need for geo- coding of accidents. There is also a need for more extensive mining of accident data.If European standards were to be applied on vehicles sold in South Africa, many would receive zero-star ratings. Poor welding, lower quality steel, hastier production lines, or a lack of proper quality control to cut costs, leads to poorer quality vehicles.With regard to post-crash response, the focus must be to maximize on response time with accurate incident information. Also, there is a need to maximize safety with effective communication and information. A major aim is to minimize delayed treatments and transport time to hospital.The main observations with regard to the role of the non-government sector during the workshop were: • The good practice case studies presented by a number of invited organizations, illustrated that there are various non-government bodies with expert knowledge that are actively involved in road safety promotion in South Africa. This demonstrated that civil society, academia, NGO’s, the private sector and other bodies in South Africa could play an important role in support of government’s actions during the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021 - 2030. • The need exists to explore synergies among the various non-government stakeholders; as well as with government in order to strengthen future road safety actions.