25/03/2022
Our Mission Statement
To partner with private and public sectors in an effort to reduce crashes and the resulting injuries and fatalities on South African roads by researching and implementing specific and measurable education and awareness programmes.
Nine years ago, the Road Safety Foundation (RSF) was founded by Philip Hull and Petro Kruger, two individuals who between them, carried some 26 years of experience in the road safety arena. More recently, Eugene Herbert, also with a wealth of road safety background has joined the team. There were a number of reasons the RSF was formed, but perhaps two of the most important were that of a definitive lack of acceptable and proactive responses to a burgeoning number of road traffic incidents and then the absolute lack of accurate data around crashes, injuries , fatalities and other related statistics.
Certain entities, had chosen a strategy of reactive comment whenever an incident occurred, often resulting in a perception of being highly critical of Government and being the so-called ‘Protectors of the Motoring Public’. Perhaps a shrewd marketing strategy, however we have always felt that to optimize efforts within the road safety arena, both state and private sector should more often than not be on the same page.
Unfortunately, this has been easier said than done! Road safety entities within the private sector have shown little will to collaborate unless a positive marketing return is realized (with a few exceptions) and this combined with Governments policy of appointing personnel into senior positions within the Transport Ministry with little or no experience in the relative field has in our opinion led to a catastrophic decline in effective road safety implementation. We certainly do not mean to be critical or derogatory towards these officials, if one considers they generally hold the position for 4-5 years, have under their portfolio of responsibilities, not only our roads, but also air, rail and maritime transport, by the time they complete their term in office, they would have at least some knowledge in all of these areas………and then they are transferred into other functions!
So the first four years was spent researching the industry, spending countless hours on the road in an attempt to realize where the real issues were. Surveys around defective lighting on trucks (11.3%), co-operation on brake and tyre research on heavy vehicles (where over 72% of trucks tested were issued with discontinuation notices!), (a Fleetwatch initiative) the lack of awareness around tyre pressures and tread depth, awareness and education around active safety items such as ABS and product evaluations on many safety items such as bluetooth connectivity were just some of the projects we undertook.
And then some 3 years ago, we realized that nothing had really changed on our roads and in fact we were going backwards!
So, as the Road Safety Foundation, we decided to reduce our activities on the road and pursue a radically different approach to the issues around road safety. We have focused largely on the psychological impacts working with Departments of Psychology and Criminology at various tertiary institutions both locally and abroad and We believe we now have a far better ‘feel’ as to how to maximize our efforts.
From a communication perspective, the research showed that South Africans do NOT like being told what to do, so previous ARRIVE ALIVE communications, as an example, were too prescriptive and were therefore of little value.
So we need to change our type of communication to make it more generally acceptable ………
Partners
Mercedes-Benz
Honda
