Media Release by Daylin Mitchell, Western Cape Minister of Transport and Public Works
As envisaged, the Western Cape experienced significant influxes and outflows of vehicular traffic to and from all parts of the country on our main routes during the 2021/22 Festive Season period.
The Festive Season Safety Plan made provision for and took into consideration the applicable Lockdown Level 1 Regulations, the rising cases of the new Omicron variant and their impact in the Western Cape.
Unlike during the previous festive season, there was the very likely possibility of increased traffic volumes in the province as a result of the fact that there were no restrictions placed on inter-provincial travel as well as no stipulated curfew period.
School and industry closure and opening dates in 2022 presented a staggered movement of traffic volumes which added additional pressure on all law enforcement agencies to implement the necessary operational deployment and mandates to control traffic to ensure effective and safe traffic flow on all road networks with the ultimate objective of ensuring that all road users reach their destinations safely and unharmed.
The Sub Directorate Quality Management and Evaluation assessed several major Traffic Law Enforcement and Road Safety interventions within the province based on the approved Festive Season Plan which I officially launched on 13 December 2021.
At the launch, we also witnessed the graduation of 86 traffic students who were deployed across the province to increase our resources and visibility during the festive season.
Today, the Directorate: Traffic Training and Development is welcoming 104 (90 provincial and 14 municipal) student traffic officers who will follow a 12-month Traffic Officer qualification course. The Department successfully processed 14 687 applications to identify the student traffic officers as part of the Traffic Student recruitment drive across the province. The training commences today.
The Integrated Festive Season Plan focused on the following critical areas:
- Fatigue management
- Public Transport
- Weighbridge/Freight awareness operations
- Driver and vehicle fitness operations
- Alcohol enforcement
- Moving violations
- Speed
- Seatbelts (Driver, front and rear)
- Pedestrians
- Inter-Provincial Corridor operations (EC/NC/WC)
Integrated SAPS operations - DMA and other National/Provincial focus
- Internal/External operational role-players include:
- Land Transport Safety Management (DoTPW)
- Safely Home (DoTPW)
- Neighbouring Provinces (EC, NC)
- South African Police Services (SAPS)
- Emergency Medical Services (EMS)
- South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL)
- Forensic Pathology Services (FPS)
- Fire and Rescue Services
Fatigue Management operations were expanded on the N2 and N7 corridors and were not limited to the N1 corridor during this festive season, in order to monitor and identify driver fatigue, encourage the resting periods recommended between travelling distances and to create awareness of fatigue as well as the importance of good driver wellness.
The deployment of 30 additional fully branded high-performance vehicles took place on 15th December 2021 to various traffic centres to enhance visibility, enforce good driver behaviour and promote safety on all routes. There are 96 high performance vehicles in total.
The newly refurbished and branded mobile vehicle testing units were deployed in December 2021, to improve on planned vehicle fitness operations by conducting roadside vehicle tests to suspend unroadworthy vehicles from further use on a public road.
Following the roll out of the identification of habitual offenders during Easter 2021, derived from our technological systems and camera network to identify repetitive bad driver behaviour and repeat offenders, we have expanded on the initiative by utilising the enriched data to contribute towards the Department’s communication strategy to create driver awareness and influence driver behaviour.
The following areas were prioritised for the festive season.
- Vehicle licensing
- ASOD transgressions (Average speed over distance)
- Private vehicles potentially utilised as public transport vehicles
Adverse weather conditions in the Central Karoo and Garden Route districts during the festive season impacted on planned operations, accessibility to major routes including Meiringspoort pass and the availability of resources.
The Traffic Centres affected had to continually amend the deployment strategy to adapt to the circumstances taking into account the operational expectations during festive season. Resources were allocated to deal with road closures and flooding in the respective areas.
Two major fires affected the Metro and Overberg areas during this period. These saw road closures on the N2 during the first week of the exodus and during the second week of the traffic return, resulting in resources being deployed for approximately 25 hours to regulate the safe flow of traffic via identified detours.
All major routes showed a massive increase in vehicular traffic.
The N1 corridor carried a huge number of public transport vehicles during multiple periods identified in the plan and had approximately at times between a 20km to 30km backlog of traffic entering through the towns within the Central Karoo. Local Authorities assisted by regulating traffic as quickly as possible through the towns concerned.
The West Coast and Garden Route districts also saw a major increase in traffic volumes to places of leisure.
Provincial Traffic also assisted with the provision of abnormal load escorts in response to urgent requests from the wine industry and other commercial interests. This was during the identified embargo period for such movement of abnormal loads. Assistance was provided in order to contribute towards growing the economy of the province.
Route B97
Enforcement of the B97 minibus taxi route continued between Bellville and Paarl on N1, in terms of the amendment of the extraordinary measures I extended on 26 November 2021 for a further three-month period.
Provincial Traffic ensured daily deployment throughout the festive season to enforce the closure of the route as well as the suspension of the affected operating licences. This ensured operator compliance on the prescribed route as well as compliance with all related operating conditions as per the NLTA, 2009 (Act 5 of 2009) in respect of public transport vehicles. The records of the team during the festive season shows that there are still major challenges on the B97 route which will require further intervention.
The following special operations and successes were recorded on Route B97 between 1 December 2021 to 11 January 2022.
|
Number of interventions |
23 |
|
Number of vehicles stopped |
1 498 |
|
Number of section 56 notices issued |
467 |
|
Taxis impounded (CATA) |
25 |
|
Taxis impounded (CODETA) |
32 |
|
Taxis impounded (other associations) |
17 |
|
Discontinued notices |
103 |
|
Arrests |
26 |
General Operational Challenges
- High traffic volumes and congestion
- Non-closure of freight industry
- Fatigue Management (Drivers and Personnel)
- Pedestrian Movement and Safety
- Management of Road Incidents and Crashes
- Drinking and driving, moving violations, excessive speed
- Increase in motorists offering bribes to our officers
During mid-2021, certain technological projects were prioritised for festive season and training initiatives for all operational staff with regards to enhancements and improvements to the system to ensure operational readiness for the festive season. The newly appointed traffic officers that graduated in December 2021 were trained on the utilisation of technology and systems. They were issued with the new generation handheld devices and blue tooth enabled printers so that they were operationally ready when deployed for the festive season.
The vision of the branch and the integrated data hub is to have a centralised and co-ordinated system that allows data and information to be electronically captured and utilised intelligently. This links to external information systems to ensure better service delivery and a well-informed chief directorate with easy access to clean and accurate data that complies with stringent system verification for planning and decision making.
I played a vital role to promote our communication and awareness campaign in support of the Festive Season Operational Plan by actively participating at various Traffic law Enforcement activities and awareness campaigns across the province.
Festive Season Statistics 2021/22
The following statistics will serve as a comparative analytical report for the 2019/20, 2020/21 and 2021/22 festive seasons, to realistically indicate progress based on the operational environment taking into consideration that the 2020/21 festive season period consisted of restrictions aligned to lockdown level 3 as well as the applicable curfew during that period.
Daily, verified operational and fatality statistics were submitted to the National Department of Transport and the Road Traffic Management Corporation as the agreed reporting structure for festive season information for provinces.
The fatalities are based on the 30-day rule of any person killed during or immediately after a crash, or dying as a consequence of a crash withing 30 days of such a crash. It is important to note that the statistics do not include that of Local Authority Services because their data are not subjected to the stringent verification processes of the Chief Directorate: Traffic Management.
A comparison of overall provincial statistics can be seen below:
|
Overall Western Cape Province Comparison Fatalities 01 December to 11 January |
|||
| Road User | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 |
| Cyclist | 5 | 1 | 6 |
| Driver | 34 | 28 | 45 |
| Fell of Vehicle | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Motorcycle Pillion | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Motor - cyclist | 6 | 6 | 10 |
| Passenger | 35 | 38 | 70 |
| Other | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Pedestrian | 74 | 59 | 74 |
| Total | 157 | 132 | 207 |
| Crashes | 141 | 110 | 155 |
|
Overall Municipal Comparison Fatalities 01 December to 11 January |
|||
| Road User | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 |
| Cyclist | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Driver | 22 | 18 | 12 |
| Fell of Vehicle | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Motorcycle Pillion | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Motor - cyclist | 6 | 5 | 7 |
| Passenger | 14 | 15 | 22 |
| Pedestrian | 59 | 49 | 55 |
| Total | 106 | 89 | 101 |
| Crashes | 101 | 82 | 92 |
Festive Season Comparative Traffic Volume Trends
As mentioned during the launch of the Festive Season Safety Plan in December, we expected a huge influx of vehicular traffic from other parts of the country.
In total, 3 877 918 vehicles were sighted on ASOD sites between 1 December 2021 to 11 January 2022. 1 916 788 vehicles were recorded during the same period in 2020/21. Please see three-year comparison below.
| 1 December 2019 till 11 January 2020 | 2 077 987 |
| 1 December 2020 till 11 January 2021 | 1 916 788 |
| 1 December 2021 till 11 January 2022 | 3 877 918 |
Traffic Law Operations and arrests
A total 15 500 Traffic Law Enforcement Operations were conducted in the 2021 calenda year.
Traffic Law Enforcement Operations/Roadblocks conducted increased from 1899 in 2020/21 Festive Season to 2030 in 2021/22.
The number of impounded vehicles increased from 74 in 2020/21 to 279 in 2021/22 while the number of discontinued vehicles increased from 565 to 764 in the same reporting period.
The number of people arrested for drunken driving increased from 89 in 2020/21 to 154 in 2021/22.
Overall, the total number of arrests increased from 223 in 2020/21 to 315 in 2021/22.
The monetary value of all charges, suspensions and arrests increased from R29 559 758.00 to R51 760 100 in 2021/22.
Habitual Offender Project – 1 December 2021 till 11 January 2022
Habitual offenders were listed on the hotlist, cited during festive season 2021/22 and traffic officers created awareness by engaging repeating offenders concerning their behaviour
Conclusion
The festive season 2021/22, in comparison to comparable periods in previous years showed a significant increase in road fatalities, mostly due to driver behaviour resulting in motorists making hasty and radical decisions regarding the basic rules of the road. These have often resulted in road crashes which claimed many lives.
The other contributing factor that impacted on the achievements of Provincial Traffic was the excessively high volumes of traffic experienced on all routes in the Western Cape in comparison to previous years traffic volumes during the same period.
This increase was mainly due to the travel bans placed on many international destinations and no longer accessible to South Africa, thereby drawing more visitors to local destinations.
The Western Cape’s popular tourist attractions drew many tourists as there were no restrictions placed on accessing these recreational facilities with no stipulated curfew hours.
We will continually strive to utilise business intelligence obtained through our electronic systems together with operational experience and historical data to be able to look at improved planning, co-ordination and effective decision- making in the operational environment. A change in operational strategies from time to time is needed to deal with the changing operational demands and circumstances.
The professional conduct, dedication, sacrifice, and cohesion of all internal and external operational role-players during the festive season is acknowledged and commendable.
Media Queries
Ntomboxolo Makoba-Somdaka
Spokesperson for Minister Daylin Mitchell
Cell: 082 953 0026
Email: Ntomboxolo.Makoba-Somdaka@westerncape.gov.za