It is said that at least 13 people have died and 45 others sustained serious injuries in road accidents during this year's Easter. The figure is almost double that of last year, which stood at eight. The numbers have gone up amidst the strike by civil servants that enters its eighth day today. One would have thought that there would be anarchy on our roads because of absence of transport officers who usually give tips to long distance travellers at roadblocks. Anyway, there are many contributing factors to the low numbers, one of them being that some people were broke and did not have money to travel. What is worrying about the majority of the accidents is that most of them involve public service vehicles, which are supposed to be safe and which are the only hope for many travellers. We have observed that most of the drivers of public service minibuses are young men who exceed the speed limit frequently. They do this despite the overload of passengers and their luggage in poorly serviced vehicles.
Young people should learn to be patient in the things they do. They should learn that it is impossible to cover, within minutes, the distance between Serowe and Mafikeng or Francistown and Lobatse. In many cases, the driver is just experimenting on how fast the vehicle can travel and under no pressure whatsoever to reach his destination within a specified period of time.
