UN road safety documentary features award winning Safely Home First Kiss Ad

Statement by Donald Grant, Minister of Transport and Public Works

United Nations TV recently released a documentary about the global road safety pandemic. The programme includes the Safely Home First Kiss TV commercial which resulted in a huge increase in backseat seat-belt wearing in the Western Cape.

A significant portion of the film was shot in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, at the scene of the tragic death of a 5-year-old boy walking to school. The boy was killed by a minibus taxi driver who drove on to the pavement while attempting to pass other vehicles stopped at a pedestrian crossing.

Safely Home Strategic Co-ordinator, Hector Eliott, identified the case for UN TV, and provided the logistical support necessary to produce the Khayelitsha portion of the documentary.

Road safety focus needs to be squarely on our most vulnerable road users, those who are not in cars. The most vulnerable of all are child pedestrians and we are very grateful to the United Nations for putting the spotlight on this issue. It is fortuitous that the release of the film coincided with November’s pedestrian theme on the Safely Home Calendar.

The overall trend in child road deaths is downward. The Western Cape Government’s Safely Home initiative is on track to achieving our target of reducing the child road death rate per 100,000 children (0-14) from 11.0 in 2014 to 7.2 in 2019. Currently, an average of 10 children are killed each month on Western Cape roads which is way too high. Statistics also show that just over 75% of children killed on Western Cape roads are pedestrians, and this proportion has been increasing in recent years, as passenger deaths have been going down (because of better vehicles and more parents buckling kids up), while pedestrian deaths have remained constant. This represents a decrease in the death rate, as this is despite massive population growth.

We will continue to be innovative in our approach to raising awareness about road safety in order to decrease the number of people killed senselessly on our roads.

Learn more about pedestrian safety at www.safelyhome.westerncape.gov.za and follow #WalkSafe and #SafeRoadsForAll.

The film can be viewed online here:

http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/21stcentury/detail/5192763951001.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRQYbgOTHyQ   

The First Kiss can be seen here: https://youtu.be/JhUN9Gv0M9Y