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Road Safety Awareness and education

Road safety awareness and education

Bakwena has initiated and assisted with several road safety and education programmes in communities along the corridor in recent years. These programmes have generally been focussed in areas where the interface between pedestrians and non-motorised transport and motorised transport is a concern with respect to road safety and programmes have been implemented focussing on:

  • visibility and reflectivity of pedestrians and non-motorised transport;
  • learner's awareness of the rules of the road.

In rural areas, transport methods may generally be less formal than those of urban areas. However, interactions with high speed trucks, busses and passenger vehicles remain a daily occurrence and the issue of visibility on roads becomes that much more important.

Nowhere is this truer than in Dinokana, a rural village bisected by the Bakwena N1N4. In Dinokana the primary modes of transport are foot, bicycle or donkey cart, and these methods are used daily by children and adults alike to move along and across the N4.

In 2005 Bakwena launched an initiative with the objective of improving the visibility of donkey carts and cyclists as part of our road safety programmes. The Traffic, Safety and Security Division of 3M South Africa and Bakwena co-sponsored the supply of 1000m of 3M Diamond Grade reflective sheeting, while Nameplate, the company that produced all the road signs for the Bakwena N1N4, provided metal sheeting to reinforce the 3M reflective sheeting. Approximately 800 m of the diamond grade reflective sheeting was applied to the metal sheeting to make it rigid and therefore easier to apply to the donkey carts, which come in all shapes and sizes and types of material.

In 2005 Bakwena and 3M staff embarked on a trip to Dinokana to start the visibility programme. The North West Department of Road Safety assisted in the programme by providing a short lecture on the importance of being “keen to be seen” and then the fun started with the application of the tape to the donkey carts and bicycles. While at first donkey cart and bicycle owners appeared a little unsure of this new material, it very quickly became clear what a benefit the material was and soon over 200 donkey carts and over 250 bicycles and their owners were lined up waiting to receive their reflective tape.

Bakwena has also been instrumental in distributing over 4000 reflective lanyards via traffic officers, road safety officers and other representatives to pedestrians along the corridor. The objective of this programme has been to highlight to pedestrians the importance of being visible at night.

Bakwena extended this visibility programme to busses in 2007 with an initiative which involved educating bus drivers on the importance of ensuring that their buses are visible. In addition Bakwena supplied small strips of reflective material for the back of the buses as a temporary visibility measure. As a result the majority of the bus operators involved in the initiative have subsequently equipped their buses with the legally required reflective tape.