SOLVING ROAD (AND PEDESTRIAN) SAFETY PROBLEMS THROUGH SUSTAINABLE JOB CREATION IN OUR COMMUNITIES

Southern Africa faces many challenges, amongst others unemployment and road deaths, almost half of the road fatalities being pedestrians. Innovative solutions for solving road safety (and especially pedestrian safety) challenges in our rural communities can be achieved by involving the local community in the solution. This should be done in such a way that the local community members actively participate in road safety and particularly pedestrian safety education. Training is one way of achieving this goal. The experience in labour intensive construction infrastructure provision in rural and urban communities can be applied in community pedestrian safety projects. This paper will indicate how facilitating the forming of a steering committee (representing the local community, local school, SAPS, Traffic), implementing authorities (municipal, provincial, toll concessionaire), implementing agent (consultants, project managers) and training in this case a community safety/pedestrian officer, (instead of the usual community liaison officer) who can implement the community pedestrian project can be used to enhance existing road safety education in schools