Slight increase in road crashes: Transport deputy minister

JOHANNESBURG - The long weekend has just begun, but road crash figures are already a bit higher than last year.

But deputy transport minister, Lisa Mangcu says it's not a major concern for now.

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He has attributed the crashes to drivers exceeding the legal speed limit.

He said, "I wouldn't want to venture into numbers as most of these crashes need to be verified...there's a very notorious tool called social media where people just post figures and scare people."

"We are seeing so far a slight increase comparatively to last year in terms of crashes but it's still early days, we're verifying these figures...we're not majorly concerned but we're watching the numbers closely...yesterday [Thursday] we were concerned about an average of drivers exceeding the speeding limit..."