Among the proposals made by Minister of Transport and Public Works Mr Robin Carlisle are plans to reduce the speed limit in the Western Cape by 10 km/h, which means a normal traveling speed of 50km/h in residential and urban areas and 110km/h on freeways.
While many might agree that reducing the speed limit could result in fewer collisions, I can't help but think that there are far more important aspects of road safety we should be looking at - after all, what difference does it make to a pedestrian whether you're going 40km/h or 50km/h when you hit them?
Which brings me to my next point - the fact that many of the accidents we see on our roads are caused by pedestrians trying to get to the other side of busy freeways, overloaded, unroadworthy taxis, drunk drivers or drivers who've illegally purchased a license from a corrupt traffic official and don't know how to drive.
Instead of lowering the speed limits we could look at erecting more foot bridges for pedestrians to cross main roads, installing permanent cameras in high accident locations to deter speeding and having more regular roadblocks checking for unroadworthy vehicles or unlicensed drivers.
Will lowering the speed limit lead to fewer pedestrian-vehicle accidents on main roads?
Will it stop taxis jumping red lights, driving recklessly and stopping unsafely?
The fact is that laws are already in place to prevent road accidents - we should be enforcing these laws instead of making new ones to try and compensate when they are poorly upheld.
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