2025
Festive Season January 2025
Over the Festive Season: We were very involved with giving our recommendations on how to bring down our very preventable road deaths, how to run drink driving campaigns and asking for road crashes to be classed
as a National Disaster.
Here are some of Caro Smits interviews & newspaper articles
- 6 Jan 2025. Newsroom Afrika TV Vuyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABJaF1ujKsQ
- 7 January 2025 https://t.co/GuBV8vuNWO
- 9 January 2025 IOL on line https://t.co/hXc5RiH1qO
- 20 January 2025 SAFM https://t.co/F2ZwyKlrin
- 30 January 2025 IOL online https://bit.ly/40AVIUg
- 31 January 2025 eNCA TV http://bit.ly/3EiCtai
4th Inter Ministerial Road Safety Conference. Marrakesh, Morocco
Caro Smit attended this important 4th Inter Ministerial Road Safety Conference in Marrakesh Morocco, with 5 000 delegates from around the world 17- 20th February 2025, including 65 members of the Global Alliance of NGO’s Advocating for Road Safety & Road Victims.
The theme of the conference was #CommitToLife. Here world safety experts looked at solutions, and shared experiences/projects to stop these deaths/injuries.
The statistics are shocking. 1.19m people die & 20-50 m are injured ANNUALLY on the world roads. A large focus was on Africa, sharing facts & evidence based-solutions. Africa is especially impacted by crashes, & too little attention is given these very preventable deaths/injuries. We have 3% of the world’s roads, yet account for 19% of the world’s deaths. In SA that’s 24.5 per 100 000. Totally heart-breaking.
SADD together with, and as a member of the IRVP- International Road Victims Partnership – fought for the rights of victims to be included at the Conference. After repeated requests the Conference was opened with:
a) 1 Minutes silence to acknowledge and remember the victims and their families,
b) we were able to have a stall in the Exhibition Hall &
c) the #MarrakeshDecalaration recognized the effect crashes make on victims’ families, and road crash Victims Organizations were acknowledged as having a role to play to raise awareness and stimulate actions to bring down deaths/injuries on the roads.
Dr Etienne Krug from WHO thanked the victims organizations for our brave work
Caro Smit cycled with the youth from YOURS-Youth In Road Safety- to highlight the fact that we need to make cycling safe, and to have #StreetForAll. Great emphasis was also placed on making the roads safer for pedestrians & the need to make walking safe.
Discussions at the AVIRT Study Meeting 18 March 2025
Experts who were involved with this study and 2 NGO’s (ChildSafe & SADD) attended this meeting.
It was agreed that the burden of alcohol abuse is increasing in SA, with the already overburdened Emergency Department trauma clinicians seeing an escalation in alcohol related injuries, all week long now, and not just over the weekends. These injuries result from road traffic crashes (including pedestrians),intentional and unintentional injuries from violence such as stabbings, GBV, gun shots, etc., as well as from self harm.
It was felt that this should be seen as a National Health Emergency. Many of these patients are repeat offenders, and it results in a great loss to our GDP, as well as emotional and financial trauma and burden to families and individuals.
Possible solutions would be
- extra trained staff and tools being made available to test for alcohol abuse in the ED’s,
- doing Brief Interventions at the Hospitals, and
- more alcohol treatment centres (both In Patient and Out Patient) with highly trained staff, being built in SA.
SADD’s Manual “Drs Manual for Emergency Units and Hospitals” is available, via the Contact page.
Rethink Your Drink Relaunch Business Breakfast
27th March 2025 attended DG Murray Trust: Rethink Your Drink Relaunch Business Breakfast, an exclusive event bringing together key stakeholders to discuss impactful solutions for reducing alcohol harm in South Africa.
A summary will follow shortly
ChildSafe Seminar
1st April 2025. Attended the ChildSafe Seminar advocating for 30km outside school zones, together with RTMC and City of Cape Town Transport Officials.
A summary will follow shortly
United Nations Global Road Safety Week 12th – 16th May 2025
The 8th UN Global Road Safety Week (UNGRSW) was held from May 12-18, 2025, focusing on making walking and cycling safe, with the theme “Streets for Life”. The week aimed to spur action at national and local levels to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists, highlighting specific interventions by various stakeholders.
- Why: Walking and cycling are an integral part of the multimodal transport systems advocated in the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2020-2030
- Promoting and supporting policies on walking and cycling is cost-effective.
- Target:To reduce road traffic deaths and injuries, particularly among pedestrians and cyclists. Pedestrians and cyclists make up nearly half of all road traffic deaths in South Africa.
- When walking and cycling are safe, these modes of transport can contribute to making people healthy, cities sustainable, and societies equitable.
- Call to Action:Take concrete actions to improve road safety for vulnerable road users, including pedestrians and cyclists.
- Proven evidence-based measures must be taken to make walking and cycling safe. It mentions:
- safe road design: dedicated walking and cycling lanes, sidewalks, crosswalks, and roadway lighting;
- safe speeds: speed limits set at maximum 30 km/h (20 mph) in cities and strong enforcement of these limits;
- safe vehicles: emergency braking systems, electronic stability control, in-vehicle technology systems that detect pedestrians and cyclists and crash-protective vehicle fronts;
- safe behaviours: as drivers, avoiding speeding, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and distracted driving, and comprehensive laws and law enforcement around these behaviours; and
- timely, lifesaving emergency care.
As an NGO SADD arranged and took part in these activities.
12th May 2025 #MakeCyclingSafe event in Kommetjie, Cape Town
14th May 2025 #MakeWalkingSafe event in Woodstock Cape Town with Amathuba Collective, YOURS (Youth in road safety) Young Urbanists, and head of NMT (non-motorised transport) CoCT, Dirk du Preez
16th May 2025 #MakeCyclingSafe event in Ocean View, Cape Town, with the Fresh Start Cycling Club.
Posters on pedestrian safety and UNGRSW left with Kommetjie Primary School and Ocean View Primary School
Interview with Ashraf Garda on SAFM – 16th July
Mandela Day
Mandela Day – 18th July.
SADD invited the Western Cape Transport Department to hand out visibility belts to cyclists and walkers for Mandela Day. MEC Isaac Sileku and staff joined us for 67 minutes to #MakeCyclingSafe and #MakeWalkingSafe
