Beating the safety drum

This is the year I learn to drum, all you have to do is get some rhythm, you don't even have to be able to carry a tune. In the meantime lets beat a familiar drum, the road safety tune. It is good news that festive season fatalities are down from 2007 to 2008. The Arrive Alive website quotes Trafffic Department figures of 885 deaths from the beginning of December 2008 as opposed to 1535 in 2007. This is a reduction of almost half and evidence of a successful road safety campaign. Reasons for this could be increased presence of traffic officers, road blocks, and tougher penalties on drunk drivers plus an intensive road safety campaign. Traffic authorities have indeed been out in force, checking sobriety, licences and road worthiness, all of which seem to have had the effect of reducing accidents and keeping the inebriated off the roads.
New Years Eve in Pietermaritzburg saw revellers waiting an hour for taxi's, and there were very few private cars on the roads. Many people chose house parties, or braai's to see in the new year. The fear of being caught under the influence, and spending a night in jail has been fairly effective in changing behaviour. The penalties are high, up to 6 years in prison, forfeit your vehicle, and a fine of up to R120 000.
Perhaps economic woes have played a role in that fewer people could afford to go on holiday, with disposable incomes squeezed in the credit crunch.

It seems that zero tolerance is effective in controlling road crime and I wonder whether it will be adopted as policy for other crimes. The broken window theory of zero tolerance worked in New York, where petty crimes such as littering, and graffitti were viewed as symptoms of larger, more serious crimes and were dealt with harshly. Oddly enough clamping down on petty crime coincided with a reduction in murders. Stiffer penalties are needed as deterants, especially when it comes to our national shame, the shocking numbers of rapes of women children and men, and a apparent national tolerance of violence against women in particular. Penalties should be so harsh, that committing these crimes becomes unthinkable. While life in prison is perhaps not a deterent for hardened criminals, in South Africa's overburdened prisons it is likely to be "nasty, brutish ans short", and society will at least be protected from these predators.
In many ways our sociey accepts criminality in small or large form, we are tolerant of littering, ineffective at combatting theft, at the mercy of armed gangs and hijackers and have a tolerance of hard drug abuse that is shocking. In a democracy where we have chosen legislators by majority we are breaking our part of the bargain by not abiding by our own laws, of course the government should keep their end of the bargain by keeping us safe, from each other, but not at the cost of our freedom. Since I wouldn't risk walking one kilometre
through town at night, my freedom as a citizen has been lost long ago.