Howard Dembovsky, a former police officer, and chairman of South Africa’s Justice Project – a non-profit that monitors the country’s traffic system and its implementation of road laws – scoffs, “More people are dying on our roads than die in the Middle East in war-torn countries, per day!” He says that the injuries and deaths because of road smashes are a “national tragedy” and that “the country’s citizens and authorities aren’t taking the matter seriously.”
“Drivers in South Africa are lawless. They speed. They drive under the influence of liquor. They go through red traffic lights. They and their passengers don’t wear seatbelts… Many don’t have valid licenses; their vehicles aren’t roadworthy… And hey, if you get caught by a cop for any of this, you just bribe your way out of trouble.”
The government said about 14,000 people lose their lives in car crashes in South Africa every year.
However, independent analyst Carol Smit of the ‘South Africans against Drunk Driving’ group, disputes this number.
“If you’re looking at the statistics from the mortuaries, it’s more likely 20,000 or 25,000 a year,” said Smit. This tallies more with WHO’s numbers.
The WHO’s 2015 Global Road Safety Report, based on 2013 statistics provided by governments, rated Africa’s roads the world’s deadliest. The continent is home to countries with the highest road death tolls.
The WHO put South Africa’s road fatalities per 100,000 people at just over 25, a little below the African average of 27.
What South Africa and other countries in Africa need is that those very people causing these accidents should not be driving at all!
Eye on the Road
That is why the breaking story on all global networks on March 14th was Intel’s purchase to buy Mobileye is Israel’s biggest hi-tech deal in history.
The US chip giant Intel will be buying Jerusalem’s autonomous driving company Mobileye for over $15 billion, that is about R200 billion in SA currency.
Intel’s acquisition marks the coming together of two important technologies related to self-driving cars. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich stated that the deal “merges the intelligent eyes of the autonomous car with the intelligent brain that actually drives the car.” The saying “What’s under the hood will increasingly refer,” says Krzanich “to computing, not horsepower.”
What does this all mean for South Africa?
Less death and destruction on its roads. By integrating Intel’s high-performance computing and connectivity experience with the Jerusalem based Mobeleye’s computer vision technologies, the chip giant is hoping to position itself for fully autonomous vehicles. Intel estimates that the market opportunity for vehicle systems, data and services will grow to $70 billion by 2030.
However, the Mobileye deal is not only about cash, but about Israel’s place in the history of technological innovation. Only 18 years since being in business, the Jerusalem-based Mobileye has established itself as a major producer of driving assistance systems – warning drivers of approaching vehicles, pedestrians, obstacles and road margins.
This latest development takes the ‘race’ for the driverless car – a concept that has been around for decades – to an all new level.
As can be seen by Intel’s hefty bet on Globaleye, Israel’s technology sector is today at the vanguard in making the world a better and safer place.
