Ending the carnage

Namibia's road carnage is a crisis in need of a broader multisectoral approach, with experts warning that road crashes are likely to rise, as more people access cars and infrastructure improves, while authorities lag behind because of a lack of resources and cross-section planning. “In Namibia, road safety is treated as a transport issue, yet in developed nations it is treated as a public health issue,” Eugene Tendekule from National Road Safety Council (NRSC) told Namibian Sun.He noted that although road safety is still tackled as a transport issue, road accident victims occupy “more hospital beds at one particular time than other pandemics”.Tendekule added that road safety “is a shared responsibility in a complex multisectoral context”. “The challenges that come with the impact that is created by the carnage on our roads, has a bearing on other sectors, such as health.”The NRSC said this week that an increasingly motorised country “represents a high, unacceptable cost to society and health” and demands “new and effective action”.These actions are needed to address forecasts that for middle-income countries, including Namibia, the risk that road crashes will increase steeply, are high unless new and holistic approaches are adapted and implemented. A recent landmark World Bank study cautioned that failing to address high rates of road crashes could cost a chunky loss in GDP over a number of years, among other issues.The study also noted that many sectors should take active leadership roles in tackling the problem, including the health sector.National studies conducted by the NRSC found that “road crashes are largely determined by levels of income in a country, where rising levels of income increase the penetration of private motor vehicles among all income groups of society, leading to higher traffic crashes in light of the lagged increases in traffic law-enforcement, driver training and education, and awareness campaigns that are present in many development countries”.Tendekule cautioned that Namibia “cannot make headway in curbing road accidents and attain the income growth” indicated by the World Bank report, with the current deficiency's in resources - financial, human and physical - at hand in the road safety management system. The World Bank study estimated that reducing road accidents could translate into an additional 15% to 22% in GDP per capita growth over 24 years. The NRSC said necessary changes to reduce, over a sustained period, car accidents, require a holistic eye-view. “An effective road safety management system covers three linked elements, namely institutional management functions, interventions and results,” Tendekule said. He added that “countries with the safest road networks have demonstrated political will by targeting better road safety outcomes, adopting and funding a systematic, evidence-based approaches to intervention, and ensuring key organisational arrangements are in place”.The NRSC said further that a lack of adequate funding for the development of transport infrastructure, inadequate skills and an imbalance between the development and preservation of infrastructure “hampers the sustainability of the sector”.Numbers show the problem Road crashes have increased by more than 5% a year in Namibia since 2007, the NRSC noted. As a result of this, a study was commissioned in 2015 to determine the true cost of road accidents to the economy.A key finding was that the cost of road crashes is “multidimensional and includes several aspects related to the vehicle, the driver and occupants, infrastructure and the administration involved in dealing with a crash,” the NRSC said.The price tag of crashes to the Namibian economy amounts to 0.91% of GDP, as calculated on the N$1.34 billion it cost the country in 2015, Tendekule explained. Further, for every 1% increase in real GDP, it is estimated there is a 0.63% increase in crashes, the NRSC noted.“This implies there is a relationship between an increase in GDP versus an increase in crashes,” Tendekule said. Horst Heimstadt of the Private Sector Road Safety Forum (PSRSF) said the 2015 findings on the cost of crashes could be translated to N$1.6 million per fatality. He cautioned that in many crashes, the breadwinner is killed, which means a loss of income for as many as seven people at a time. He explained that the United Nations estimate that saving a life can cost as much as N$18 000, which would translate to roughly N$14 million needed to curb the average number of fatalities per annum.“Although it is debatable how much is really needed, it is clear that it would be much cheaper for any country to implement preventative measures than to pay for the fatality,” he added.A recent decrease in road crash numbers, including a 72% decrease in crashes over the Easter weekend, was a hopeful sign that public education campaigns, in cooperation with better law-enforcement, was making inroads.However, without proper research it remains unclear what is working to reduce crash statistics and statistical data is sorely needed.Tendekule said the statistical decrease in crashes “at any given time can be at times be ascribed to concerted efforts of road safety stakeholders and also on the other hand it can be seen as a normal phenomenon”.JANA-MARI SMITH

Ending the carnage

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Namibian Sun 2025-11-04

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Ending the carnage

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Namibian Sun 2025-11-04

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