Look, it’s absolutely insane that up to 14 000 people are killed on our roads per annum. Those figures are from 2009, and are apparently the last reliable statistics available.

That, according to Bob Geldof logic, would mean that about 38 people are killed on the roads every day.

I can’t stress enough how appalling that is.

But saying that the road deaths are due to a speed limit that is too high is a bit of a silly statement for a transport minister to make. But that is what S’bu Ndebele wants to do.

“There are increasing calls and signs that something drastic needs to be done to arrest the current situation,” Ndebele said in a statement last week. “Studies conducted in other countries such as Australia where the speed limit is 110 km/h indicate that a reduction in speed limit can save lives.”

People who are much smarter than I am have pointed out that this action would be futile.

The spokesperson for the Automobile Association was wonderfully cynical about how we would all react to Ndebele’s call. Gary Ronald said, “Our feeling is that this will only generate revenue through speeding fines rather than save lives on the road, because South Africans have shown that they are not a compliant nation.”

In his BusinessDay column, Alexander Parker actually took out a calculator, did some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and showed that reducing the speed limit from 120 kilometres per hour to 100 km/h could result in more road deaths, not less.

I don’t believe our minister is daft. He survived the worst purge of the ANC government since 1994 as a known Thabo Mbeki backer. He went from being the Premier of KwaZulu Natal to becoming a cabinet minister. Take it from someone who follows politics closely for a living – it takes a bit more than luck to achieve that.

I’m also not one of those who believes that everyone in government is a dunce. There are a lot of people working in Pretoria, being paid a lot of money, because they are smart and know what they are doing. Some of those people have the ear of S’bu Ndebele.

Someone at some point must have pointed out to him that the reduction in speed limit logic was, well, illogical.

And yet he forged on with it. Why?

Is it the same thinking that caused the Toyota Prius to become the mode of transport adopted by so-called environmentally conscious yuppies all around the world?

You know the thought-pattern: Toyota Prius is a hybrid, which uses less fuel; therefore it is kinder to the earth. This logic ignores how the Prius is made to start off with (some studies say that making a Prius pollutes the earth more than making a sports utility vehicle like a Land Rover).

This argument also completely misses the fact that fuel economy is all about how you drive a car.

Top Gear proved that when they managed to get a higher fuel economy out of a BMW M3 than a Toyota Prius.

I think that the transport minister wants to limit the speeds at which we can travel at because by Prius logic, speed kills. So less speed, equals less death.

It’s how we drive that’s the problem, not how fast. Ask any professional racing driver.

If you had to ask me to fix the road carnage problem, I’d propose an eminently more expensive one than lowering the speed limit.

There are simply far too many unsafe vehicles on our roads. The taxi industry is largely a law unto itself, and we’re paying the price for it, with loaded cadavers. But who is going to tell them that? The government, that’s who. Let’s not forget the other public transport culprits.

According to the Road Traffic Management Corporation, 35% of those killed on our roads are pedestrians hit by vehicles, and about 70% of the drivers of those vehicles are over the legal blood-alcohol limit. Prohibition on alcohol advertising, or the outright sale of it isn’t a solution there either. South Africa has a big alcohol abuse problem that can only be permanently solved through education.

And honestly, as someone who took the K53 licence same as everyone else (well, maybe not, I took the test that requires a pass on the parallel parking test), I can say with confidence that it didn’t teach me much about driving. It took me almost four years of constant going about in sedans and hatchbacks of different sizes to become a comfortable driver. The trick of conscientious driving isn’t taught in driving school.

Let’s face it; we South Africans are crap drivers in general.

Perhaps one last solution we need to look into as a country is forcing all drivers to go through the Finnish driving school system.

Read more:

• Alexander Parker on the proposed lower speed limit, in BusinessDay https://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=154297