Road Safety Comparison in South Africa – How Do the Different Provinces Compare?

Abstract

South Africa is known for its high level of road fatalities, which continues to hamper socio-economic development and impact the well-being of all South Africans. Road traffic and fatal crash information are reported on a national level, for country reporting purposes, to the United Nations Decade of Action (UN, 2010), as well as to record and analyse annually on the whole spectrum of data collected for road safety interventions. In 2018 the World Health Organisation ranked South Africa at number 136 of 175 of participating countries regarding road safety. This ranking implies that South Africa falls within 30% of the poorest performing countries in terms of the relative risk associated with dying, due to a road traffic crash. What is not well known, is the road safety burden faced within various provinces in South Africa, and that the success to reduce the fatality numbers varies around the country. This has implications for the associated risk, creating a need for appropriate tailor-made interventions for each province. Fatality data for the years 2015 to 2017 were analysed at a provincial level. Absolute fatalities, as well as the fatalities per 100 000 population, are compared. The analysis has a closer look at the influence age has on various aspects. The detailed analysis revealed significant differences per province in fatality rate per 100 000 population (between 18 and 35 fatalities per 100 000 population), age and gender (males between 20-39 are most at risk), day of the week (weekends are dangerous), time of day (late afternoon and early evenings carry a high risk) and transport mode (heavy and public transport vehicles cause more fatalities per registered vehicles). The cost of crashes per province was also analysed over the study period and compared per province with the average annual cost burden; the lowest in the Northern Cape (R4.6 billion) and the highest in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal (more than R30 billion).