*Platform2 offers less advantaged British people aged 18-25 the opportunity to undertake a fully funded ten-week work placement in a developing country.

In South Africa, on average, 2,000 people are killed per year by blunt instruments, 3,000 by sharp instruments and 5,000 by guns. Yet, the accolade of most man-made kills does not go to any of these coveted weapons. Instead, it is drunk drivers who kill 6,000 people a year and judging by my experiences of the country, this number could increase….

No sooner had I arrived in South Africa as part of a Platform2 voluntary experience* than I received my first of many warnings about the dangers of the country. A restaurateur named Steve, while preparing my first South African meal, bluntly told me that:

"Life in Africa is worth very little."

In spite of the warmth, friendliness and kind hospitality that I would come to experience from the South African people over the course of my 10-week stay, I have come to accept Steve’s statement as fact.

Nowhere is it more evident that life has little value on the African continent than in the booze fuelled demolition derby that takes place daily on South Africa’s roads, where the grim reaper, refused an exit visa, plays traffic controller.

My first experience of the country’s tendency to combine a cocktail of drink and motor-vehicles came during a journey in a mini-bus taxi from Cape Town to Mamre, the place I would be living and working for the next few months. After the driver joked about how he had enjoyed a drink on the road, our taxi came to a halt on the freeway. Roughly ten cars ahead lay the barely visible sight of a car wreck surrounded by several Police vehicles and a truck parked ominously on the verge.

Before being diverted to an alternate route, while stationary, a woman from a coach in the adjoining lane exited the vehicle, presumably due to travel sickness. To reach the roadside, she scrambled over our taxi’s trailer, which held our suitcases. Meanwhile, our inebriated driver had released the handbrake and stimulated the accelerator before he spotted the nauseous lady. She went hurtling head-first from our trailer to the tarmac road and this was the last I saw of her, since, by the time the driver was informed, he told us we had gone too far to turn back.

Later in this prolonged trip, local radio explained the reason for our diversion. A drunken lorry driver had collided with a car, cutting short the life of a young female primary schoolteacher. I was to work in a school in the subsequent weeks; luckily I’d be travelling on foot.

Rather than blame absent-minded carelessness for the numerous drink-driving incidents in South Africa, I began to fear that the problem was owing to entrenched social attitudes towards the influence of drink and drugs.

When I came to shoot a scene for a documentary meant to highlight the night-time drinking culture of the small community in which I lived, it was decided it would be safest to bring along a car in case the need to escape quickly arose. A member of the local disabled group whom some volunteers had worked alongside arranged the ride. When I jumped into the car, parked outside the local bars and nightclubs, I was greeted from the front-seat by a middle aged man and his excitable wife who was holding a little girl, who, by this time of night was fast asleep. After much amusement by the fact I was from Oxford in England and some photos to commemorate this discovery, the man at the wheel offered me a beer, which he revealed from the glove compartment. Why not I thought, I’m about to take a camera inside what can become a violent and hostile environment and plan to film people against their wishes – I could do with a drink.

"Glass?" he said.

"You’re kidding right…of course I want a glass!"

After I had filmed inside the local bar without major incident (one man had shoved the camera away and told me where to go), I returned to the car. The driver had been taking care of my drink, quite literally, as over half of it had disappeared. Nevertheless he passed the glass back and allowed me to top myself up. Stretching his hand past his sleeping daughter, he reached for the glove compartment again to pull out another two glasses! One was for him, the other for his wife – neither was for the child, thankfully. He passed the used-glasses to me to fill and did so with such casual sociality that I complied without question and thought nothing of it until my return to Britain.

Fortunately no accidents occurred as a result of this drinking and before watching a plethora of people jump into their cars following a night-out, we retired to return a very tired little girl home and into her bed on the side of town where the volunteers had been told not to go. People are fully aware that driving under the influence is an offence; they either simply don’t care or have far greater things to worry about.

It also doesn’t help when there are numerous reports in the press about on and off-duty Policeman driving around intoxicated, especially since the attitudes towards law enforcement officers is far from amiable as it is. Far less drivers are stopped and charged with the offence of driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol in South Africa than in the UK. Yet many more people are killed as a result of drink driving in South Africa, which suggests fundamental failings in Police practices.

I learnt from many journeys that the seatbelt is also worth very little, and can only recollect a handful of occasions when the safety device was utilised, one being out of necessity following the passing of a Police car.

Following a mid-week braii (BBQ) at the local Primary school, organised as a thank you to the volunteers and for which I supplied some beer for, I was shocked that a number of teachers stumbled towards their cars and thrust the key in the ignition. This time, I have to admit; I was worried that the very people responsible for educating South Africa’s children on these matters were as guilty as any drunken truck driver who had killed a young women. They were just lucky their vehicles were smaller and more adapt at avoiding collisions. Thankfully, the next day only one teacher failed to turn up to work, but this was another stark reminder of the social acceptance of drink driving in a country renowned for high crime levels.

With some 20 million less people, spread over a mass landscape, it is alarming that more deaths occur as a result of drink driving in South Africa than the more densely populated and geographically compact United Kingdom. It is feared that, unless social attitudes are to change fundamentally the destructive relationship between alcohol and cars will cause further unnecessary deaths.