Cape Town – Annually, schools enter their holiday period while families plan holidays to celebrate the religious Easter weekend. But, statistics are showing high rates of carnage, caused by accidents on South African roads.

Last year’s Easter death tolls proved inaccurate after South African Minister of Transport, Dipuo Peters, released the country’s prelim stats of the 2016 Easter weekend accidents. According to these stats, a total of 333 people died in road accident, while 2015 recorded a total of 229 Easter road deaths.

But, the death tolls seemed to have been wide of the mark.

“We commend the traffic law enforcement officers, who maintained high levels of visibility on the roads throughout the Easter period,” – Dipuo Peters

In 2016, SA’s Transport Minister attributed a 46% reduction in Easter road deaths, to the large volumes of traffic officers stationed during the Easter weekend, as well as to road users’ willingness to obey the SA road rules.

The Easter report indicated a total of 156 road accident deaths during the previous 2016 Easter, with the North West recording a decrease of 71% and the Western Cape making a 75% drop. This toll was down by 2015’s total of 287 deaths.

Although the decrease is always ‘a good thing’, the South African Justice Project’s, Howard Dembovsky, believes that this comparison may be a bit “misleading”. According to Dembovsky, the Easter weekend was preceded by a long weekend and also fell within the school holidays. This reduced the amount of road users – The less vehicles on the road, the less chance of a car crash.

The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) revealed that the main cause of Easter road deaths were drunken and negligent driving, fatigue, and pedestrian hit-and-runs. The Minister had also divulged detestation of uniformed officers, who were caught issuing fraudulent driver’s licenses and soliciting bribes – mostly in Gauteng and Limpopo.

CarZar urges road users to take their family’s road safety into consideration and action extra caution on the road, during the month of Easter.