Mortuary Image Falsely Linked to Recent South African Road Crash; AI Not Reliable for Fact-Checking

South Africa’s road death toll remains stubbornly high, with the Road Management Traffic Corporation (RTMC) reporting 1,589 fatalities during the recent 2024-2025 festive season. The six-week period from December 1 to January 11 saw deaths among drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists across the country, highlighting the persistent challenge of road safety in the nation.

Pedestrians accounted for 42% of all road fatalities, underscoring the vulnerability of those traveling on foot. Geographic patterns were also evident, with nearly two in five fatal crashes (38%) concentrated in just two provinces: Gauteng, the country’s economic hub, and KwaZulu-Natal, a densely populated coastal province.

Human error continues to be the predominant cause of traffic deaths. According to RTMC data, a striking 85% of crashes resulted from “human factors” such as speeding and jaywalking, rather than environmental conditions or vehicle defects. This pattern suggests that behavioral interventions and enforcement remain critical to reducing the death toll.

The road safety challenge exists alongside another pressing issue in South Africa’s public health system: unclaimed bodies in state mortuaries. As of February 2025, approximately 2,800 bodies remained unclaimed across the country’s facilities, down slightly from the 3,100 reported by the Department of Health in August 2024.

Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, currently houses 868 unclaimed bodies in its facilities. Several state mortuaries in the province are operating beyond their designed capacity, creating storage challenges and potential public health concerns.

While road fatalities and mortuary overcrowding are legitimate issues facing South African authorities, misinformation continues to circulate on social media platforms. A particularly persistent image purportedly showing bodies from recent road accidents has been debunked through reverse image searches. The photograph actually originates from a July 2022 TimesLIVE article documenting conditions at a Durban mortuary in KwaZulu-Natal.

This same image has been repeatedly misused to support false claims. In 2024, it was circulated alongside fabricated reports that 23 bodies had been stolen from a mortuary in Barberton, Mpumalanga province – an event that never occurred.

The ongoing circulation of such misleading content highlights the challenges of information verification in the digital age. Reverse image search tools remain valuable for determining an image’s origin, but even advanced technologies can sometimes perpetuate misinformation.

When the mortuary image was submitted to Google Lens with the question “when was this picture taken?” the resulting AI overview incorrectly connected it to the debunked Barberton story from December 2024. Rather than referencing fact-checks or official statements disproving the claim, the AI appeared to base its response on the original false social media posts – including content that had already been flagged as misinformation on Facebook.

This pattern of AI systems amplifying rather than filtering misinformation has been documented by fact-checking organizations like Full Fact in the United Kingdom. Media experts caution that AI summaries can produce inaccurate results even as users increasingly rely on them instead of reading complete news articles or visiting primary sources.

The dual challenges of road safety and mortuary management remain significant public health and infrastructure issues for South African authorities. However, addressing these problems requires accurate information and context, unobscured by the spread of misleading or recycled imagery on social media platforms.