Online Reporter
WE are about to enter the core of the festive season, with the four public holidays over the next fortnight largely lining up into three long weekends so even those who need to be on ordinary duty get a lot of decent breaks.
This will produce even more traffic on our roads, and the continuing programmes to rehabilitate, rebuild and upgrade highways making it even easier to travel, and opening up temptations for breaking the law, such as speeding, driving under the influence, taking more risks when overtaking and generally allowing more opportunities for drivers to err.
Yet the season is supposed to be the festive season, a time when families gather to enjoy themselves.
It is not supposed to be a time of death and mourning, when families gather to bury their dead killed in road accidents.
Already, we are seeing the death rate mounting, with 10 people killed, while crammed in a single small car that moved into the wrong lane and hit a large truck head-on.
This is described as an accident that is easy to prevent, simply by following road rules.
The authorities, as is usual at this time of year, have mobilised police, vehicle inspectors, safety officials and others to try and get people to conform to proper road use.
The big difference this year is that the police can enforce the rules of the road far more effectively.
Persuading people to drive safely is a good start, but some fail every year to be persuaded, and need to find out what happens to law breakers.
Cabinet has already instructed the police to arrest and charge those who break the law, and has made sure that the police can now gather the required evidence, easily, and that attempts by some of the law breakers to get round the enforcement by pleading with police or even offering bribes are doomed to failure.
Traffic police are now equipped with breathalysers to check blood alcohol levels, with speed cameras to check speeds, and have cameras mounted on their uniform that will record the whole interview with a driver, including temper tantrums by the motorist, any deviation from proper procedures by the officer and generally making sure that everyone behaves properly.
This new-found ability to enforce the laws must be used, and statistics issued daily so everyone knows that the police are serious. We also need to reserve admission of guilt fines for only the most trivial of offenders, and with anything vaguely serious resulting in a court appearance.
Quite a lot of the court cases can use summons, rather than initial remands and bail, to speed up the processes. One exception would have to be those found driving under the influence of alcohol who really need to be off the road until they are totally sober.
No one really wants to dampen the Christmas spirit by having scores or hundreds of people in police stations under arrest, but at least they will be alive and uninjured, unlike those who they might otherwise kill and harm.
The easy way to avoid this sort of treatment is simply to follow the rules.
We all hope that with the police able to take effective enforcement action, the overwhelming majority of motorists will behave properly. The ideal would be traffic police on duty just waving through long streams of vehicles driven by people who know the law are obeying the law.
We still need the threat of action to keep a surprising number of people honest, but if they reform then they should have little trouble moving around.
There will, unfortunately, always be some accidents, even when we reduce driver error to low levels.
So the Government has deployed 24 specialist accident ambulances, some from the private sector via the Insurance Council, on the most dangerous sections of highway.
These will be backed up by the growing number of ordinary ambulances, around 400 at last count, that are always around hospitals and in the local authority areas and the districts, so that when there is an accident trained crews can reach the scene within that crucial first hour.
This is just part of the normal results of the upgrading of our health systems. But we also need to remember that while we are enjoying ourselves, a large group of people will be manning the emergency services and be ready to rescue us and to treat us.
The traffic police, while perhaps not loved, are also on duty and critical to ensure a trouble free festive season. Law-abiding motorists can still treat them with respect, if only because they help ensure the other drivers will also be obeying the law.
The Second Republic has shown itself remarkably affective in dealing with the problems facing Zimbabwe, solving each as it came up and well as those inherited.
With traffic law enforcement now moving into a higher plane, we can expect lower death tolls, even if there is more work for the courts in the early stages as drivers get used to the new set-up.
The preventative services should also find it easier to be taken seriously now. When drivers know that they face a far higher probability of being caught if they breach the rules of the road, they might well want to make sure that they know exactly what they must do, both in obeying the law and in following best practice.
So the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe has an opportunity to help keep motorists out of trouble.
And let us remember, we all want to celebrate the joys of life, not the death of our loved ones and the deaths of those we may kill when we break the law.
We can work the positive side of the season with a little forethought and a willingness to treat others as we want to be treated.
