Pretoria - The newly established Road Safety Council in the Eastern Cape is expected to help ease road carnage in the province.
Launching the council on Monday, Transport Minister Sbu Ndebele said it would be responsible for the implementation and sustainability of road safety initiatives in the province.
Ndebele made a personal plea to eliminate road deaths, urging people from all sectors to work "together, faster, smarter and efficiently and strive to make our roads safe and save the precious lives of all of our people."
He said accidents cannot be resolved by the state and its agencies at various levels of government acting alone and not in concert with road-user communities.
"Road accidents are the business of all of us. Road safety is not what one does to a community; road safety is what one does together with the community," said Ndebele.
Referring to a report released last year, Ndebele said Africa had the highest road death rate per population in the world.
African road deaths were currently 200 000 a year and were predicted to rise by 80 percent by 2020.
By 2015, road crashes will be the number one killer of children aged between 5 and 14 in Africa, out-sprinting malaria and HIV and Aids.
Ndebele said they are working towards changing these statistics, saying traffic law officers will be out in full force to reduce lawlessness.
"We cannot tolerate bad driver attitudes that do not respect traffic laws and the infrastructure in place when transporting people," said Ndebele, who last week announced plans to stop and check no less than one million vehicles and drivers every month across South Africa.
