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The Executive Director of Discovery Insure Themba Baloyi spoke to Tim Modise about the high fatality rates in South Africa. Over 5 000 lives have been lost on South African roads since April.
Baloyi says taxis, who transport 65% of road users, contribute 15% of the fatalities compared to private motorists who contribute 50%.
He suggests that insurance companies can help improve the situation if all motorists were compelled to insure their vehicle. Currently, only 36% of all vehicles on South African roads are insured.
Themba Baloyi, thank you very much for joining me, and talking about the road safety issue in South Africa. A lot of lives that get lost on our roads, as well as a serious impact on the economy and we’ve not been able – you probably will share with me the numbers of how much the economy is affected by what goes on, on our roads. A shocking statistic recently, five thousand lives already lost in a space of five months in South Africa (lost on South Africa’s roads) and you are monitoring this situation. What is going on out there do you think?
Tim, thank you for the invitation. The reality is that the statistics are shocking, and we are dealing with a pandemic, if you were to look at it that way.
The issue here is that people are losing lives and there are many families, that are affected, and it goes beyond just one individual, or five thousand people that you are talking about.
We’re five thousand times four, assuming that a family of four people is affected, so you’re looking at more than 20 thousand people in the equation, and I think the way that we look at road fatalities in this country and anywhere else in the world – we are the worst.
We don’t fare very well and I think we need to do a lot of work, more than just talking about it.
When you monitor what’s going on and study what’s going on elsewhere in the world, why is South Africa having such a large number, the largest number of fatalities, as well as people who are maimed in these road accidents? I’m sure, when we get to that point of the disabilities and so on, the knock-on effect of this – the number increases substantially, so what is it that makes South Africa different?
There’s a multiplicity of factors at play and one cannot ignore the fact that our public transport system is also a contributor because people do not rely on that public transport system. If you compare it to other countries, Australia, and other first world countries – people tend to rely heavily on public transport. Public transport has been an alternative to owning a vehicle.
Unfortunately, in South Africa, because of that unreliability of public transport, many people tend to want to own vehicles and I suppose traffic congestion becomes a contributing factor. Over and above that, I don’t think the training that we give our drivers is adequate.
In other countries, such as in the US, teenagers, when they first get their licenses, there is a period at which they cannot drive without supervision. In addition, there is a time limit, which they should be able to drive.
Unfortunately, here we don’t have that monitoring mechanisms, to make sure that the young people do not drive beyond certain hours of the night. I think you can’t look at it purely, from a singular one causality. It’s a broader situation, which requires a broad perspective, in terms of the strategies that we develop to combat these road crashes.
Read also: Let’s find incentives to address SA’s R300bn pa, 38 daily road deaths
What’s the impact of the road crashes on the economy? We’ve spoken about the lives that are lost and the injuries that people sustain, as a result of this but apparently, the impact is substantial.
It’s significantly substantial than what is currently reported and what has been spoken to, over a couple of years, but we do know that, at a certain date, when Minister Ben Martins was still in charge, we had an estimated figure of R307b that is lost by the economy. That we can attribute to a number of factors, including potential income.
In fact, the recent results that the Minister of Transport, Dipuo Peters, was talking about is that we are losing 80% of the crashes we’re talking about, which was that five thousand.
Those are people between the ages of 19 and 34, so you can see these are actively sharp and strong people in the society, who were supposed to be contributing to the economy. Those are the types of people we are losing.
The sense is that beyond just the actual number – if you start considering the issues, the impact on the public health system, also on the private health system, and many other factors. We are losing a far bigger number than we should be, as a country and it is completely unacceptable. We should be addressing it head-on.
Interestingly, however, is that all the role players who have significant influence on dealing with this problem – all are coming up with their statistics, right.
Yes.
Then what happens? What do we do, given that we know that the numbers of people, who get killed and injured on the roads, is not something we can live with? That it is unacceptable completely, and the impact on the economy is as substantial, as you’ve said. What do we do with that?
I think we just need to be a bit more pragmatic. I know there are initiatives on the go, as we speak, right now, including the recently formed National Road Safety Advisory Council to the Minister. I think we need to go beyond talking.
There is just too much talking, without something substantive on the table, which can be implemented. We tend to talk about policy changes. Policy changes take time. It needs to go to Parliament but there are certain low-hanging fruits that we should be focussing on.
Simple things, such as things that do not require a legislative change, where you deal with young people and say, “Let’s make it cool to drive safely. Let’s make it cool not to be caught driving under the influence.”
Unfortunately, I think we are caught up so much on focussing on one or two things that we consider being silver bullets and the reality is that you need multiple interventions to make an impact.
For instance if you look at the work that we’ve done, and I’ll use a reference point from the business where I come from – we’ve created incentives, and we see the impact of incentives.
We’ve created mechanisms to make it easy for people not to drive under the influence. If you look at our clientele when they’ve gone out and they feel that they’ve taken one too many then they’ve got a facility, which provides them with alternative means of transport, someone who can drive their vehicle or use, alternatively, an Uber type of a service.
We need to be as pragmatic as that. We need to come up with solutions that are tangible and that are easy to implement.
Well, just give me – you’re talking about your company, Discovery Insure – that’s what we’re talking about here.
Yes.
What exactly do you do? How does it work?
We make it easy. If you’re going to go out at night. I mean many people tell you, “Yes I would love to not drive under the influence but I get overtaken by the circumstances.”
Because of our technology and our ability to link people and to link our clients to the service providers. It makes it easy for them not to give an excuse anymore, to say, “I had no alternative but to drive myself back home.” We use organisations such as Good Fellas, who will drive you home and take your vehicle home.
Alternatively, you can leave your car where you were having one or two drinks and take an Uber service, so we make that so much easier and visible to the client. I think the issue, time and again, is that we talk about these issues but we don’t give people the tools.
In general, what the data is showing us is that people respond to easy tools that they can use. It is not that people don’t want to respond to these issues and deal with the issues of road crashes.
You’re saying you make it avoidable to drive under the influence of alcohol, right.
We make it easy for you to find an alternative solution.
Okay, yes, that’s a neater way of saying it. Find the alternative – that’s the message here.
Yes, but creative an incentive as well, which is why the product makes it very easy for the guys to not drive under the influence. Your product says ‘between these hours and these hours, you shouldn’t be driving’, so then find an alternative solution and your Vitality Drive points, and those Vitality Drive points, and then enable your behaviour to be rewarded.
It is very important because when I said to you ‘that enforcement mind-set needs to move beyond the number of traffic officers we put on the road’. Yes, it’s important to have 24/7 monitoring of our roads but the reality is that you can’t monitor 11 million people or 11 million drivers.
Well the view some people have raised, there are two parts actually, to my question. One is that of the Road Safety Awareness Campaigns and they are run in the country around Easter and around the festive period, towards Christmas, but they do not seem to be effective. I want your comment on that, and the second one is that of enforcement on the roads. What are your views?
On the safety campaigns and this has been a conversation for a while now. That you can’t have safety campaigns only when it comes to festive seasons.
Road safety is a 365, 24/7 issue, and we can see, if you look at the statistics you’ve just mentioned to us. People are dying in exactly the same numbers, on a monthly basis. Whether it is in the December period or the Easter period, so the obsession with just one period during the year, or two periods during the year, is misguided.
We need to have the awareness that goes beyond just one particular month or two months. In fact, unfortunately, as I was coming here, I just seen what had happened over the weekend, where we lost five people in a crash on the N1, and it is just one of those things where we’re saying, “Why are we focussing on only one particular period, when things are actually happening on a monthly basis?”
That’s the first part that we need to deal with, the issues of road safety awareness, but beyond road safety awareness – we need to give you tools to be able to respond to the messages that we are giving you. It is of no use to just, tell you that speed kills, without giving you the tools and the mechanisms, so that you can measure yourself accurately.
That you know how you are doing on a day-to-day basis. In fact, I will go on to say perhaps you need a leader board of some sort, where people can see who is actually, doing well in terms of safe driving. The same way you have a leader board on the Formula 1 but let’s have a leader board, based on how well you drive.
Those things and those technologies is what our organisation is focussed on, to delivering to the community, because we cannot continuously just talk about what needs to be done without actually hitting the rubber, putting the rubber to the tar.
The second package we spoke about was the issue of recent crashes that we’ve seen and the impact to the economy. Is that correct?
Yes and the law enforcement side of things because that’s what people say – there’s not enough visible policing to help reduce those crashes.
Those crashes obviously, as you say not enough visible policing. The reality is that, on that basis, as I said earlier on, you cannot have 11 million traffic officers on the roads. In fact, we have a short supply of traffic officers, as things stand right now, so you need to go beyond policing and have self-enforcing mechanisms.
Where people say listen, I’ve done well. This is what I get for doing well, people should look forward to doing the cool things, and driving should be the cool thing to do and that’s where I think we need to do a radical shift.
Yes, it’s undeniable. There are those people who are just not going to respond to those incentives or who are not going to respond to those mechanisms, and you need to deal with them in the harshest possible way.
In the meantime, you have many other people, who are just normal citizens, who just need to have that line of visibility on what needs to be done.
But the majority of road users in South Africa are uninsured, and you are talking about tools and cool things that can be done to improve road safety, so what happens to the ones who drive un-roadworthy cars, in some instances or are uninsured, or they are using – they’re not even licensed to drive for that matter.
That is where the mechanism of changing what we will all a policy in South Africa. Where in other countries you cannot have a vehicle on the road if it is uninsured. Here, in South Africa we have that scenery only, in fact, 35% of the vehicles are insured.
Perhaps that’s where the policy changes need to come into play, and I know that there are apprehensions from a different perspective, from legislators and what have you, for numerous reasons, but that needs to come to a point, (comes to a head) where we say, “If your vehicle is uninsured – it cannot be on the road.”
That becomes a powerful additional policing mechanism. As an insurer, I will never insure a vehicle that is not roadworthy, period. Therefore, a consumer, if he knows its law, to have a vehicle that’s ensured – will ensure that their vehicle is roadworthy.
Those are some of the additional tools, which we need to be thinking about. That we need to be implementing and I know that the FSB, (Financial Services Board), National Treasury, and the Department of Transport have been in discussions on this issue but I think we need to move a little bit faster, to make sure that we implement on such policy changes.
Themba Baloyi, thank you very much for talking to us.
Thank you, Tim.
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