This coming weekend is the four-day holiday covering both Independence Day and the religious Easter period and many Zimbabweans will be on the move. Some will be travelling long distances, others just visiting friends, relatives, places of entertainment and resorts close to home.
Some will be attending the national and provincial Independence celebrations and then moving on to their religious obligations before taking part in family and friendly parties. There will be a lot of extra traffic on the roads.
So personal and non-business traffic will be building up everywhere, and roads are likely to be crowded. On the roads will be more ordinary drivers rather than the professionals driving trucks, so there will be more risks taken and more mistakes made unless everyone thinks very seriously about their driving.
Last year 27 people were killed in 286 accidents over the Easter holidays, two less than in the previous year, but that was hardly a major decline, just the sort of variation that can be expected when people do not really change the way they drive and keep making the same mistakes.
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Enforcement has been concentrated on fixed police checkpoints, which are fine for some purposes, but do not really address the problems of speeding, unsafe overtaking and other bad driving since almost all drivers are exceptionally well-behaved when they approach and pass a police check point. It is what they do between checkpoints that causes the accidents, the deaths and the injuries.
This year the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe, Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development and the police are deploying more than 40 mobile teams across the country, who will be able to intervene when they see the bad driving and breaches of driving laws and regulations as they occur, and so be able to take action.
The deployment was announced by Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Felix Mhona at the road safety and education campaign launched by the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe, with support from Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe and other senior Government officials.
This deployment needs to be widely publicised, and the mobile teams need to not just deal with the breaches of the law, but also make their presence seen on as many roads as possible. When drivers know that a police car can appear anywhere they tend to behave a lot better, and not just when they pass the static checkpoints and tollgates.
There can also be better collaboration between the mobile teams and the checkpoints. Often suspicious behaviour, or a dubious vehicle, can be seen by the mobile team, who might be busy with another driver. But a phone call to the next checkpoint with details of the vehicle being badly driven or which appears to be falling to bits can see that vehicle being stopped.
A driver might think they have escaped notice, only to be waved over when they come to the checkpoint with full details of errant driving to explain away and checks to be taken.
Among those checks should be drinking checks. Beer bottles on the seats are a giveaway, but we would hope that the breathalysers on order have arrived and are being deployed as well. A lot of drivers moving between family celebrations and driving to and fro between bars and home will have taken on more drinks than they can cope with.
We also have the preventative work done under Minister Mhona in the last few years to bring order and higher levels of safety to the public vehicle sector, the kombis, buses and trucks. Highway vehicles now need to have speed limiters and tracking devices; regulations are in place to ensure that all new bus and kombi drivers must be over 30, and when public service licences need to be renewed the drivers again must be over 30. That might help by keeping impatient young cowboys off the road.
The Traffic Safety Council does a lot of sterling work trying to educate the public, but while good drivers listen, the bad drivers just carry on, so that is why we need to build up the preventative efforts of the Transport Ministry, enforcement by the police, joint checkpoints and mobile patrols.
Regrettably, some drivers simply will not listen, at least until they are sitting in a wreck in the middle of the road or are sitting in handcuffs in the back of a police car. But having to learn the hard way often means that someone who is driving well and is not at fault is killed or injured by the uncaring driver.
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Yet every accident is preventable. There are no certain accidents or accidents that just happen. Every accident has some human error, driver error in the vast majority, but also errors of vehicle owners not checking tyres and skimping on repairs and spare parts.
So those planning on driving around these holidays should make those basic checks before setting out, keep off the bottle before they drive and while driving, although partying at their destination if they do not have to drive home just afterwards is fine, and treat all other drivers with courtesy and respect.
This way we can have our fun; we can celebrate the 45th anniversary of Independence; we can fulfil our religious obligations. And we can do all of this without dying or being injured, or having our car towed away to a panel beater.
