Editorial: Need cops to be seen on our roads

THIS week’s accident in which two Riebeek College schoolgirls were seriously injured after being mown down by a taxi outside their school is enough to make one weep.

Likewise it is a crying shame that Riebeek’s principal, Marilyn Woods, had, some months before, appealed to the municipality and traffic department to help manage drop-offs around the school, only to be ignored.

This goes to show that Monday morning’s accident, which miraculously did not claim the lives of the two girls, could’ve been avoided.

Imagine in particular the terror the youngest one, nine-year-old Lihle Scott, must have felt, first at being hit and then being dragged along the road for about 15m before the taxi finally came to a stop.

Riebeek is one of many schools in the metro where traffic dangers loom large for our children. Just look at Port Elizabeth’s Park Drive, for instance, the site of Greenwood Primary and St George’s Preparatory schools, where reckless drivers are often seen careering along as if on a race track.

Back to Riebeek, the school can’t even operate a scholar patrol service anymore because it is simply too dangerous for the girls, given the prevailing lawlessness on the surrounding roads.

Schools in high traffic areas do require some form of visible policing, as do our city’s busiest roads, yet traffic officials are seldom in sight.

Though the chaotic state of affairs that had characterised our traffic department for a very long time has shown some improvement in the last year, visible policing still leaves much to be desired. You rarely spot officers during the day unless political bigwigs, or the president himself, are in town.

With the lack of visibility comes a culture of lack of driver accountability and this is something that cannot just be pinned on the taxis. Ordinary motorists, too, frequently disobey the rules of the road because they know repercussions are unlikely.

Where were traffic officials when young sea cadet Jay-Deane Lucas was fatally injured while crossing busy Humewood Road in February? And where were they when, this past weekend, the Eastern Cape recorded more road deaths than over the entire Easter weekend?

All this underscores the urgent need to get vigilant metro police officers on our streets, and finally see the long-awaited service up and running.