Online Reporter
EVERY minute, on every road in this country, we witness it.
The impatient motorist who swerves to overtake from the left lane.
The driver who straddles a continuous white line.
The brazen few who accelerate through an amber light, then a red one.
The reckless soul who turns right directly into the path of oncoming traffic.
And, in the most extreme and chilling cases, the vehicle driving against the flow of traffic, headlights blazing towards certain disaster.
These practices were once the notorious monopoly of commuter omnibuses — the kombis that terrorised our highways with a sense of entitlement born of desperation.
But today, that poison has spread.
Ordinary motorists, private car owners, even drivers of company vehicles have absorbed the same lethal habits.
Bad driving is no longer a subculture; it has become our national norm.
President Mnangagwa’s directive last week — mandating sweeping measures to curb reckless behaviour and remove unroadworthy vehicles — could not be timelier.
The past week alone has delivered three major crashes, claiming 24 innocent lives.
The latest, a head-on collision involving a bus and a haulage truck on the Gokwe-Kwekwe road, killed 10 people in a single bloody minute.
Yet for all the urgency of the President’s words, and for all the necessary attention on vehicle defects, road maintenance units and weather-damaged highways, we must state an uncomfortable truth: The single greatest factor in our road carnage is not potholes, nor brake failure, nor even the absence of signage.
It is driver behaviour. Or more accurately, driver misbehaviour.
According to a recent parliamentary report, road traffic accidents are now the third leading cause of death in Zimbabwe, claiming over 2 000 lives annually.
Human error and behaviour alone contribute 15,3 percent of accidents.
Speeding accounts for 11 percent.
Failure to give way adds another 7,7 percent.
Add them together, and you have more than a third of all crashes directly traceable to choices made behind the wheel — not mechanical failures, not acts of God.
So, instructively, this is where we should all direct our energies.
Government departments and agencies can impound unroadworthy vehicles, deploy traffic police, re-establish maintenance units, and even instal speed cameras, but none of these measures will succeed if we cannot reach every single driver on every single road.
A well-maintained highway is still a killing field if the man behind the steering wheel believes the rules apply to everyone except him.
We have a cultural crisis.
Driving has become an exercise in selfishness.
The lane discipline taught in driving schools is abandoned the moment a driver obtains a licence.
Indicators are treated as optional accessories.
Safe following distances are deemed a waste of time.
And the greatest irony is that these behaviours seldom save any meaningful time — a reckless overtake might gain 30 seconds at the risk of extinguishing a family’s future.
The rot began with the commuter omnibus industry, where pressure to maximise trips per day bred a culture of impunity.
But somewhere along the way, private motorists stopped tutting and started imitating.
Today, it is not unusual to see a saloon car racing a bus, or a SUV (sport utility vehicle) tailgating a truck at 120 kilometres per hour.
The language of the road used to be courtesy; now it is aggression.
So, what is to be done?
The President is correct to demand drastic measures.
But those measures must go beyond enforcement, essential as that is.
We need a sustained, nationwide public education campaign that reaches every village, every workplace, every school and every church.
We need to make defensive driving training accessible and, for repeat offenders, compulsory.
We need to revisit our licensing system, which too often produces drivers who can pass a test but cannot navigate a real crisis.
Crucially, we need a social movement.
Road safety cannot be the sole responsibility of the police or the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development.
It must become a matter of collective conscience.
Passengers must avoid boarding vehicles operated by reckless drivers.
Employers must monitor their fleet drivers.
Families must speak honestly with relatives who drive dangerously.
We must normalise the idea that reporting a reckless driver is not betrayal but citizenship.
The President has extended Government assistance to bereaved families and wished the injured a speedy recovery.
Those are compassionate and necessary gestures.
But the greatest tribute we can pay to the 24 souls lost in five days is to change the way we drive.
No road maintenance unit can fix a selfish heart.
No vehicle inspection can replace a patient mind.
Every minute on our roads, we see bad behaviour.
And every minute, we have a choice.
The next head-on collision is not inevitable.
It is waiting for a driver who believes he is more important than the rules.
Let us prove him wrong.
