State traffic body denies road death statistics are a ‘sham’

Creation date: 07 January 2010

THE Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) yesterday rejected claims that government road death statistics were a “sham”, after allegations that the figures did not add up.

The RTMC, a Department of Transport agency responsible for road traffic management across SA, said there were 1333 fatalities in December 2008, compared with 1050 deaths in December last year, indicating that the road death figures for December fell 21% last year.

It denied that it had in any way “rigged or cooked the statistics”.

But Rob Handfield-Jones, MD of driving.co.za, said yesterday the RTMC statement provided more questions than answers on the credibility of the statistics.

Handfield-Jones said that a press statement by the Department of Transport on Monday said fatalities in 2008 amounted to 1348. But, he said, the RTMC yesterday stated that the number of deaths over the same period stood at 1333.

“This raises further questions about the credibility of our road safety data, and the department’s competence in informing South Africans of the state of our roads,” Handfield-Jones said.

Despite the evidence, he said, the department continued to deny that its Monday press release compared a “confirmed statistic” in December 2008 with an “unconfirmed statistic” in December last year, resulting in the misleading assertion that road deaths dropped in December 2009.

The unconfirmed figures from both years suggested an increase in road deaths last month, he said.

On Monday, Handfield-Jones said the death toll of 1050 last month was not a decrease but an increase of 16% — 142 more lives than the previous year, he said.

Johannesburg lawyer Michael de Broglio, whose law firm De Broglio Incorporated handles Road Accident Fund cases, yesterday questioned the agency’s claim that deaths were down.

He said the figure released by the agency do “not take into account car crash victims who die in hospital days or weeks after accidents took place, which would inflate the reported death toll by up to 30%”.

The RTMC said yesterday that the road death statistics did not include the accident report forms that were still coming through from the various police stations.

artwelld@bdfm.co.za

Source: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=90784