With Christmas Day less than a week away, teams from State agencies have been deployed to enforce traffic and vehicle regulations and generally trying to create an accident-free festive season.
So, officers on the roads, from the Vehicle Inspection Department (VID), who check that vehicles are roadworthy, from Road Motor Transportation, who check that buses and trucks are registered and follow their specific extra rules, the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe, who battle to get everyone do best practices, and the police, who do the actual enforcement of all traffic law and regulation.
One innovation this year is the deployment of senior officers to monitor the teams and actual operations.
This is an important extra deployment and should help ensure that the enforcement of safety rules, the general system of warnings where these are appropriate, and the action taken against the more serious infringements are both fair and reasonable.
While police have been tightening up their procedures since the advent of the Second Republic and taking action when there are complaints, there is still the problem of private negotiations between law breakers and police and other officers when they think no one is watching.
This can take the form of a return to the days of extortion, although that is less likely, but more importantly can see a blind eye, being turned to more serious offences where there is no accident to make everyone conform.
These patrolling senior police can make sure that the teams are doing their duty properly and fairly, that complaints or disputes with drivers can be sorted out quickly and that generally the system can be made to work properly to do what it is intended to do, ensure that everyone uses the roads safely, can be assured that others are also driving safely and that they can move with the assurance that they will arrive at their destination.
Enforcement can be moderately flexible.
For example travelling a little over the speed limit on a clear day and dry road without much traffic might just need a warning, while travelling even at the speed limit in some conditions could be regarded as reckless driving.
Even for minor infringements that could be dealt with by a warning, we would hope that these warnings will still be recorded, just a line in an exercise book of car number, driver name and address and licence number and nature of warning.
Since most people stretch the law for these minor offences, having to spend a few minutes parked, while the junior constable on the team, the person the rest are almost bound to see as the natural recorder, is writing down these details will at least show that breaking rules does not mean a speedier journey.
There are additional problems this festive season beyond the greater likelihood of wetter roads. We have just passed the full moon, so as we move towards Christmas more and more of every night will be totally dark.
Between Christmas and New Year those half-moons will move towards the little slivers soon after sunset or soon before sunrise, that are totally useless for seeing anything.
So for much of this year’s festive season we will have far longer periods of intense darkness at night, another excellent reason for not driving at night except in serious emergencies. The less one can see the more dangerous a journey.
Unfortunately, the police still do not have the adequate resources to check up on the two major causes of road accidents, people driving too fast and people driving after having had a few alcoholic drinks.
In time, breathalysers and speed traps will be ubiquitous at road blocks and police patrols, but until then we need to push hard the culture changes required, that drinking and driving, and speeding, are the two most dangerous activities anyone can do on the road.
Other drivers also need to realise that these people are on the streets with them, and will be causing accidents, and they should be able to take action not to be involved in those inevitable crashes.
Standing up to one’s rights is not always the most sensible option when dealing with a drunk weaving at speed coming from the opposite direction.
Having a far safer Christmas requires everyone to conform, all drivers. The authorities and the enforcement and encouragement teams deployed on the roads can help, but most people drive very correctly when driving near a roadblock or past a police car.
While there are cases of someone smashing into a line of cars at a roadblock, most of these accidents take place out of sight of the police, and hence the need to get everyone to understand that we need to all cooperate.
The rules of the road, and the best practices as outlined in the Highway Code, work extremely well when everyone follows them all the time.
Drivers need to understand we are all safe together or are all in extreme danger together, and that we all need to choose the safe option to be safe. One rule breaker, and we are all unsafe.