Around this time every year, the Department of Transport releases its annual death toll during the December time frame and usually it takes credit for a reduction in figures. Since I raised questions about this, starting two years ago, I notice that a number of other organisations have also jumped on the bandwagon and started attacking the statistics that are released.
In short, and I don’t think they fully appreciate that yet, what the Department does is every single year it compares the previous year’s final death toll with the current year’s provisional death toll which is about 30% lower and then holds a “celebration” while taking care to carefully mention somewhere that these are provisional figures. In other words, when they get trouble, they can then say that they did indicate that it was provisional figures but my point would be don’t take the credit in the first place and have a huge press release if you know that what you are releasing in the first place is probably 30% out! 

The figures are generally wrong because they rely on accurate reporting from police stations, some of which are still to report and of course, it goes without saying that many people, and very sadly, pass away as a result of their injuries some weeks after the accident. In other words, it is quite impossible on the 10th or 11th of January to give a final figure for all of those who died in December because some of those might only die in February or March, but certainly there will be many who will pass away in mid to late January or may even have passed away the day before, but that information is not yet with the local police station who then in turn has to pass on the information to whoever collects the data. If the Department wanted to compare apples with apples, it could then compare the provisional figure that they gave the previous year, at their special press release, to this year’s provisional figures, because then at least they will be comparing inaccurate figures with inaccurate figures and one might have a much better idea as to whether or not road safety has improved in South Africa. The way the Department reports its figures is that it has been able to announce, every single year, for more than six years, that there has been an improvement over the December period while annual figures show that over this period the death toll, on an annual basis, has at least doubled! What is the chance then that there really is a reduction in the December figures?