The Easter road safety stats as released by the RTMC imply that there has been a massive drop in road deaths over the Easter period.
These figures are preliminary and unconfirmed. However, you should be aware that the figure of 197 from Easter 2009 (which is being touted as the final figure) is an unconfirmed figure which was released by the RTMC on Wednesday April 15 2009. It could not possibly be a confirmed figure, because at least seven days must elapse after a person is involved in a traffic crash before his or her death is no longer considered a road death.
With Easter Monday having fallen on April 13 in 2009, the very earliest a confirmed figure could have been issued for Easter last year was April 20 2009. A confirmed figure for Easter 2009 has never been released. This fortunately means that the RTMC is comparing apples with apples with its preliminary figure. It unfortunately means that we don’t know what the real picture was for last year and that any claims of massively reduced road deaths over Easter 2009 were, in all likelihood, incorrect.
I call on the RTMC to desist from making public statements about holiday death tolls until they have confirmed figures to hand, because it results in misleading conclusions. I also call on them to release the confirmed figures from Easter last year when they release this year’s figures so that we may understand the true comparison. I further call on them to release full detailed road safety stats from April 2008 to present so that we may understand the country’s road safety position.
Finally, I find it very unlikely that Easter road deaths could have dropped fifty percent year-on-year as the preliminary figures currently indicate. This is at odds with the experience over Christmas 2009/2010, in which road deaths were down by less than five percent over the previous year. I am extremely concerned about the credibility of the preliminary Easter 2010 figures released by the RTMC and call on them to explain this massive discrepancy.
Kind regards,
Rob
www.driving.co.za