Pretoria - Pedestrians have been urged to be extra vigilant on the roads and motorists advised to avoid driving at night this Easter weekend as records prove that most of the people killed on the roads are pedestrians and motorists driving in the dark.

This was highlighted by MEC for Roads and Transport, Kedibone Diale-Tlabela when she launched the provincial Easter road safety campaign on the R80 Mabopane Highway in Soshanguve.

Diale-Tlabela was joined by the taxi industry, government agencies in public transport, law enforcement and the Deputy Director of Public Transport in Gauteng, Xolisa Ndingane, as they stopped scores of vehicles to check for compliance.

The operation looked beyond just road safety for motorists and paid extra attention to spreading a message to pedestrians and dealing with criminal behaviour by searching vehicles and people.

MEC for Roads and Transport, Kedibone Diale-Tlabela launches the provincial Easter road safety campaign on the Mabopane Highway R80 in Soshanguve #Easter #Easter2023 #RoadSafety pic.twitter.com/SaGNN6jg41
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Diale-Tlabela said statistics have shown that during Easter and the festive season, an unacceptable amount of pedestrians die while trying to cross roads.

She said this was because there are a lot of informal settlements built on road reserves and that made the people want to jaywalk to get to work and to where they do their grocery shopping.

She said the department was adamant that motorists who can should avoid driving at night because most accidents occurred at times when people had limited visibility.

"If it is not necessary to be on the road at night, please stay at home. Our experience tells us that most accidents occur on the roads at night. We want our people to be safe this Easter weekend. One death is too many," said Diale-Tlabela.

She said she was proud and encouraged by the attitude of the taxi industry, who embraced the road safety campaign and all the initiatives to save lives and get their members to be compliant with the rules of the road.

MEC for Roads and Transport, Kedibone Diale-Tlabela launches the provincial Easter road safety campaign. Picture: James Mahlokwane

Ndingane said most of the disobedience was in the form of expired vehicle licence discs, sending a message that people were not ensuring that their vehicles were fully compliant as far as that was concerned.

He said his team issued numerous fines to ensure that those motorists attended to that problem. They also arrested one motorist who was driving with a fake licence disc.

Tshwane is the passage for travellers to link Gauteng and other provinces like Mpumalanga, Limpopo and the North West, making high traffic inevitable around this time of the year.

Pretoria News