Arrive Alive campaign inexplicably cancelled at most risky road safety time

15 December 2015

The DA believes that South Africans deserve safe and dependable roads, to easily move between cities and towns, especially at times of family reunion and family celebration. As the festive season holidays are about to start, the RTMC (Road Traffic Management Corporation) – as an arm of National Government - is doing the very opposite of fostering road safety and has inexplicably cancelled Arrive Alive, the only national Road Safety campaign in place.

South Africa is tragically the country with the highest rate of alcohol-related road deaths in the world and one of the worst in road law-enforcement. It is absolutely illogical and irresponsible to not have a properly structured road safety campaign, particularly during the festive season.

Although the RTMC claims to have replaced Arrive Alive with an alternative campaign, there is absolutely no information, detail or presence for this campaign. Our roads will be death-traps this year, and the RTMC – as an arm of National Government – will be to blame.

To date, Transport Minister, Dipuo Peters, has consistently shifted responsibility for road deaths away from her Department and towards the public. At the Second Global High-Level Conference on Road Safety held in Brazil last month, the Minister emphasised the involvement of civil society leadership and activism, rather than responsibility in the Department. 

Locally, at the Second Road Safety Summit held in November, key road safety organisations and interest groups were not invited to attend this summit. This Summit was meant to be a holistic and all-encompassing meeting of all Stakeholders with an interest in road safety in South Africa.

 To date the Minister has done little to concretely save lives on our roads, excepting by paying lip-service to it. The statistics are clear that death on our roads continue to be unacceptably high.

I will be writing to the Minister asking her to call the RTMC to account for cancelling the Arrive Alivecampaign, at a critical time of the year, with no back-up plan in place. Cancelling the only national road safety campaign whilst replacing it with nothing is simply irresponsible. 

Issued by Manny de Freitas, Shadow Minister of Transport, DA, 15 December 2015