End epidemic of child road deaths

Lazarus Sauti

Children in Zimbabwe, and other southern African countries, are vulnerable to road injuries. In this country, more than half of people killed on the roads are helpless road users, namely pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. Sadly, many are children.

“Roads are the leading cause of injury for children over five not only here in Zimbabwe, but in southern Africa and other nations in the world,” said Allowance Sango of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development, adding that, “Globally, roads are the leading killer of children over ten.”

The recently released World Health Organisation’s Global Status Report on Road Safety (2015) also indicated that “1.25 million people die each year from traffic crashes, and many of these are children, who are highly exposed on our roads.”

The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added: “Every hour, nearly 150 children between ages 0 to 19 are treated in emergency departments for injuries sustained from motor vehicle crashes.

More children ages 5 to 19 die from crash-related injuries than from any other type of injury.”

Despite the fact that road injuries are claiming the lives of many children in Zimbabwe, road safety remains severely neglected and underfunded by policy decision makers in the country.

George Goliati, president of the Passengers Association of Zimbabwe (PAZ), consequently, notes that prioritising child traffic safety is one of the most effective avenues of reducing the number of accident.

“Children are our hope, our future. They need to be protected, and as such, traffic safety education is of importance to them,” he said.

For this to be effective, adds Goliati, there is serious need to engage schools in an effort to educate children on traffic rules.

In its report, the WHO said that where motorised traffic mixes with pedestrians, cyclists and moped riders, the speed limit must be under 30km/h. This is due to the vulnerability of these road users, especially children at increasing speed.

This calls for the government and its partners to ramp strategies that ensure that motorists limit their speed so as to fight the ‘cancer’ that is claiming the country’s future leaders.

“Road traffic accidents and injuries should not simply be perceived as ‘accidents’ – unpredictable events happening on a random basis to people who have the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but as avoidable tragedies that can be stopped through multi-stakeholder action,” said Gift Matikiti, a transport and logistics researcher.

He added that the country should initiate a ‘school hub’ initiative – an idea anchored on improving safety culture as well as infrastructure around schools – piloted in South Africa and Tanzania.

The Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe (TSCZ) director for Operations, Research and Marketing, Proctor Utete believes police officers can play a major role in reinforcing children’s safety.

“Our police force can help us in reducing road accidents. We have the laws, all they need is to strongly enforce them as well as increase public awareness,” he said, adding that “traffic safety education needs to be a continuous exercise for it to cultivate a good road use culture.”

To protect children from crashes, policy decision makers in the country should also encourage child restraint use as it can reduce the likelihood of fatalities as a result of a crash by approximately 90 percent among infants and between 54 percent and 80 percent among young children.