Leading insurance firm calls for Finance Minister to address the state of SA's roads in the budget speech

Lion of Africa, one of South Africa’s leading short term insurers has appealed to Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel, to address the infrastructural issues affecting the country’s transport system in his upcoming national budget speech on 20 February by allocating increased government funds for the upgrading and repair of South Africa’s roads.

“The number of vehicles on our roads has increased over the past couple of years to just under eight million, with a large majority of them being driven by inexperienced new drivers,” says Adam Samie (pictured right), CEO of Lion of Africa Insurance Company. “However our roads infrastructure has not developed sufficiently to be able to cope with an increasing number of vehicles. Worse is the significant degradation of inner city roads many of which have become dangerous to all road users because of increased incidence of potholes.

“Roads and public transport are particular issues for us given the unacceptably high rate of motor accidents,” says Samie. “Their deterioration is impacting on the number of incidents involving private vehicles as well as business, as we have witnessed by the marked increase in the number of claims on both.”

He says that when the number of South African road users is compared to countries that have higher levels of congestion, we find that the numbers of accidents reported offshore are significantly lower. In the region of 500000 accidents are reported annually in South Africa. Besides the consequences for the people driving these cars, the economic and social cost is also significant.

“While many of these accidents are to due to human error, we cannot discount the impact that the state of our roads is having on the numbers. South Africa has one of the highest road death tolls in the world and if there is a chance to save lives by improving the state of our roads, then we should do everything we can to make this happen.”