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The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development has the responsibility of setting legal requirements for traffic regulations to enhance safety and to set the standard designs for road signs.
No one argues with this, but unless the driving public know what the regulations are and what changes in signs mean, much of the benefit of the changes are lost and since traffic police are usually zealous in applying the law, there is both perceived unfairness and a degree of confusion.
Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, but for practical purposes to assume that every driver in Zimbabwe subscribes to the Government Gazette and reads it and the inserted regulations cover to cover every Friday is not very sensible.
And even then it is often necessary to have access to a legal library when a crucial legal change is expressed as an amendment that tells you that the word “orange” in section 348 (d) (iv) should now read “red”, without saying what has changed colour.
Minister Dr Joram Gumbo agreed in Parliament last week that his Ministry must embark on awareness and education campaigns when there are legal changes, to ensure that all drivers are aware of these.
He was being asked specifically about the new road signs, which were gazetted early this year and which have been erected along the renovated sections of national highways and are now being adopted by local authorities on other roads.
Some are obvious. Anyone seeing a white-bordered red octagon with the word “stop” will instantly know this is the new stop sign. And the Minister’s explanation, that this was the common Sadc sign and is in fact a common international sign, makes a great deal of sense.
A Zimbabwean driving around the region will recognise almost instantly that similar signs, even if the language is Portuguese or French, means they should stop. But other new signs are a lot less obvious.
The Minister also alluded to complaints his Ministry must have received over other changes made last year, such as requiring spare wheels to be of standard size and warning triangles to be reflective both sides.
We hope the Ministry will now implement a proper education campaign. It can use conventional advertising, but should also prepare posters and ask service stations to display these, on the assumption that every driver at some stage needs to buy fuel.
The Ministry could go further. We would think that instead of gazetting changes piecemeal every few months it would be better to save them up and then every five years, or even every decade, make the changes in a single consolidated legal instrument and at the same time publish a new edition of the Highway Code in a blaze of publicity. The Zimbabwe Traffic Safety Board continually advises all drivers, however, many decades they have been behind a wheel, to read new editions of the Highway Code so they can adopt modified best practices and learn about legal changes.
This would simplify the education campaigns since copies of a new edition of the Highway Code could easily be sold at service stations, as well as more conventional outlets, and a grace period of say three months given for every driver to acquire a copy and absorb the new information before the police start fining offenders.
During that grace period of the education process the police roadblocks would give information and advice, rather than issue tickets for the new offences. We agree that safety standards need periodic updating and we agree that all drivers should obey these updates. But the same upgrading system needs to ensure that drivers know what the changes are and why they have been made before they are enforced.
Then they must be enforced and enforced rigorously. But in all fairness such enforcement should follow education.
Online Reporter