Cape Town - As holidaymakers find their way back home, more than 120 people have died on Western Cape roads since December 1, with 106 crashes recorded and over 8 000 incidents attended to by medical emergency services.
Since the end of 2024, 2 500 incidents have been trauma-related.
On Sunday, Mobility MEC, Isaac Sileku’s office confirmed the majority of fatalities were passengers, pedestrians and drivers. He said 21 were identified as hit-and-run cases and 51 related to pedestrians.
Muneera Allie, spokesperson for the Western Cape Department of Mobility, said there was a growing concern with the total of loss of lives on public roads.
“The Western Cape Government expresses its concern over the 106 fatal crashes and 122 fatalities recorded on municipal and provincial roads during the festive period from 1 December 2024 to 3 January 2025,” she said.
“The majority of the fatalities were passengers, pedestrians, and drivers, in that order. Notably, 51 of the incidents involved pedestrians, and 21 were identified as hit-and-run cases.
“The Western Cape Metro and the N1 route accounted for the highest number of incidents, with most occurring between the hours of 10pm and 1pm”
Western Cape Health and Wellness spokesperson, Dwayne Evans, said their emergency teams were stretched after attending to more than 8 000 incidents in just three days.
“The Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness can confirm that emergency centres across the province managed 2 549 trauma cases and 5 365 non-trauma cases over the New Year’s festive period, with a combined total of 8 194 incidents,” he said.
Makhosandile Tumana, public relations officer for the South African National Taxi Council (SANTACO), said they had a quiet start to the new year but admitted their vehicles had been involved in crashes during the festive season.
“We went to raise our concern about the fatalities that happened in 2024 and that our vans caused many accidents and yes we have spoken to our drivers,” he said.
“We are not happy and proud of the lives that were lost in 2024. We have not received any accident reports since January 2025 and we wish to ask our drivers to maintain this standard of driving.”
At the start of the festive season, the City of Cape Town’s Operation Exodus was launched and carried out safety checks on long distance operators.
More than 500 buses, 55 minibuses and 53 trailers were checked during its inception.
Arrive Alive also reported high volumes in excess of 2 000 vehicles per hour was expected towards Gauteng.