By OBAKENG MAJE
27 January 2025- The North West MEC for Community Safety and Transport Management, Wessels Morweng said 100 people lost their lives after the province experienced 87 crashes during the 2024 festive season. Morweng, who released the 2024/2025 Festive Season Road Safety campaign report in Mahikeng today said, their campaign was based on four pillars such as responsible driving, pedestrian safety, enforcement and education and collaboration.
He further said they included the focus on pedestrians as previous year’s statistics had indicated a growing number of pedestrians, who become victims of crashes and often at late hours of the day. Morweng added that compared to the year before, for the 2023/2024 travels, they recorded 98 fatalities from 86 crashes.
“For this year, the 2024/2025 festive period, we have a slight increase of 100 fatalities from 98 crashes. Despite this slight increase, the province remains second best performing in terms of least recorded fatalities.
“It is also worth mentioning that, we did not record any major crash, meaning where four or more lives are lost in a single accident. The critical route remained the N4 from our boundary with Gauteng in Brits to Dinokana at the border with Botswana,” he said.
Morweng said they have lost eight lives on this road followed closely by N12, where five lives were lost in crashes that occurred between Potchefstroom and Bloemhof. He said the other critical road is R24 that links Rustenburg and Krugersdorp in Gauteng, which recorded four fatalities followed by N14 which also recorded four fatalities.
“In terms of the Districts, Bojanala has recorded a total of 40 fatalities from 35 crashes. Ngaka Modiri Molema has recorded 27 fatalities from 22 crashes. Dr Kenneth Kaunda District has recorded 23 fatalities from 20 crashes. Lastly, Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati has recorded 10 fatalities from ten crashes,” said Morweng.
He said of 100 fatalities, 38 were passengers, 29 were drivers, another 29 were pedestrians, 3 fell off the moving vehicles and one was a cyclist. Morweng said time also played a role in the number of crashes hence they always advise road users to avoid travelling at night.
“Of the 100 fatalities, 61 of those happened between 6pm to 6am the following morning. In between, meaning during the day from 6am to 6pm, we lost 39 lives.
“Our approach this time was different. Instead of having traditional law enforcement operations which are commonly known as roadblocks, we had patrols where our officers were monitoring moving violations. This we believe reduced accidents and instead increasing general compliance with the road traffic regulations,” he said.
Morweng said this as drivers tend to obey the law in the presence of traffic officers and increase speed once they have passed enforcement operations. He said they had also been operating for 24 hours, especially on N4.
“The following challenges were encountered during the deployment and contributed to cancellation of some of our plans to ensure visibility on the roads. Rain and flooding of some of the arterial roads, especially N14, outside Delareyville.
“Protests by communities also impacted negatively on our plans as often we had to divert officers to deal with them rather than focusing on national roads. In conclusion, I want to express my profound gratitude to all law enforcement officers for their hard work in reducing numbers of crashes,” said Morweng.
He said when they enjoyed the festive season holidays, the law enforcement personnel were out there enduring all forms of weather patterns by being visible on the roads.
The Guardian 