ROAD SAFETY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 August 1938, Page 5

ROAD SAFETY

COMMISSION PROPOSED IN SOUTH AFRICA DEALING WITH TRAFFIC PROBLEMS Practical methods of ensuring greater road safety are increasingly engaging the attention of Government and other authorities. South Africa has its share of road accidents, but Mr A F. Trew, the general secretary (Administrative) of the Automobile Association of South Africa, told a representative of “The Star” that the number of people killed on the roads, in relation to the population of the Union, places South Africa at the bottom of the list. He deprecated the prominence given to accident rates, because they were virtually meaningless. “For example,” ,he said, “on the basis of the figures supplied by the Department of Census and Statistics, the A.A. could mathematically draw two conclusions: (1) That South African roads were the safest in the world, and (2) that they were the most dangerous in the world. This merely illustrates that facts and figures can be manipulated to give any desired result. “What we feel is that less attention should be paid to accident rates and more given to practical methods to increase safety on the roads. The only real practical sugestion that has yet been made in South Africa is the proposal of the association in March of last year that the Government should appoint a road safety commission.” -

This had been recommended because the problem was an extremely complex one. In the Union there was no actual data whatsoever concerning the cause of such accidents. What was urgently needed was a road safety commission to carry out the initial investigation, and continuity in that work would be provided by the establishment of a department similar to that operated by the British Ministry of Transport. That Ministry produced reports of accidents in Great Britain involving personal injury on the roads, the injuries falling under the categories of fatal and non-fatal. The findings were of a most comprehensive nature, and punctiliously detailed the nature of the accidents together with all the factors and circumstances responsible for them. In England if was felt that it was only by treating of the inquiry in this manner that suitable preventive measures could be enforced. Those reports were laid on the table of the House of Commons in ; order that the information offered should be taken into consideration by the Government in the formulating of legislation to meet the situation in the future. ",

A draft of a motor vehicle and road traffic Act had been prepared by the association with a view to providing uniform motor legislation for the whole of the Union. In February of this year a report on the financing of traffic control in the country was also published by the association as a constructive move towards road safety. "The Automobile Association,” said Mr Trew, “is going to do everything it constitutionally can in order that there will be no further delay in bringing about the appointment of a road safety commission. That would be far, more desirable than for people aimlessly to point to a mounting accident rate,”