Road safety article inaccurate

7th December 2012

Editor –

The Engineering News of November 23 quotes Paul Vorster, of the Intelligent Transport Society of South Africa, as saying that South Africa has the third- worst road safety record in the world.

This is not correct. If you refer to an article in the December edition of CAR magazine, on page 64, you will see that we are behind Zimbabwe, Botswana, India, Nigeria, Kenya, Liberia, Togo, Ethiopia and probably a host of other underdeveloped and developing countries. We, therefore, cannot be the third-worst in the world.

If you refer to the book Traffic, by Tom Vanderbilt, you will see that the accident rate pretty much correlates with the economic development of the people of a country, that is, the higher the level of economic development, the lower the accident rate. Since South Africa is by no means a developed country, it can be expected that our accident rate will be higher than that of the US, Europe, and so on.

Andre du Toit

ViaSat regional manager: sub-Saharan Africa

+27 21 975 2220