A report by Times Live after the 2019 Youth Day long weekend, marked it as the bloodiest weekend  with up to 24 passengers dying in a single incident on South African roads. If we look back at news reports of long weekends going back for years, we can see this pattern of lives lost over long weekends, but, in the same vain, we see these high number of fatalities daily, according to IOL rating SA as having the world’s poorest road safety records.

With this in mind, the question has to ring in our minds, what can be done to reduce the fatalities on our roads? According to www.autoguide.com the Sweden have one of the safest roads on the planet, so, we decided to take a look at what they do to keep their deaths per 100 000 to a minimal 2.8 compared to South Africa’s +-31.9.

1. Road planning

Sweden launched “Vision Zero” in 1997 which was a campaign for the country to see zero – nada – none deaths on the roads. As part of this campaign, they created 1500km of “2 + 1” lanes where there are two lanes in one direction and one in another and each lane takes a turn to use the middle at various intervals for overtaking. According to The Economist, this saw a reduction in road deaths of 145 within the first decade. In addition, they added 12 000 safer pedestrian crossings.

2. Strict Policing & Road Rules

Within the city borders, drivers are not allowed to exceed 50km/h and in residential areas, the maximum driving speed is 30km/h, with highways not going higher than 110km/h. Sweden also carries one of the strictest drunken driving rules where drivers are not allowed to be over a blood alcohol level of 0.2ppm with fines at a minimum of 30 daý’s wages. Vehicles are also required to have their lights on 24/7 and, police officers have the right to pull over any vehicle at any time and a bad attitude towards the police could land drivers with a suspended license.

4. Making an effort to make roads a system that encourages safety first

The Vision Zero campaign is less about punishing drivers and more about creating a driving environment that makes it easy to act correctly in traffic and the government has put measures in place to make this happen. In addition, the approach to Vision Zero seems to be an ethical one that has garnered the support of the public and local Swedes take the responsibility upon themselves to keep to the road rules. Sweden has also been on the forefront of driverless cars, with the Volvo project where tests are being done on self-driving vehicles which they believe will reduce the number of accidents even more significantly due to the removal of human error, along with utilising other digital means to better provide road safety such as geo-fencing which was brought up in an address in a 2018 speech by Maria Krafft, head of traffic safety.

It seems that improving road safety needs to be something that is tackled holistically, not only by putting strict road rules in place but also by utilising modern resources in providing a system that works for all individuals on the road, including drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.