THE CARNAGE MUST STOP – LICENCES, TO BE SUSPENDED OR CANCELLED TO REDUCE SOURCE OF DANGER TO THE PUBLIC, BY KZN MEC FOR TRANSPORT, MR S’BU NDEBELE

The death and maiming on our roads this festive season is totally unacceptable. Since the beginning of December 2002 the KwaZulu-Natal Transport Department has been analysing the province’s traffic trends on a daily basis as part of our ASIPHEPHE Road Safety Strategy which includes Education, Engineering, Enforcement and Evaluation. We cannot continue with business as usual.

Since 1996, we have critically looked at the various components of our road safety strategy to see where we could be under-performing.

  1. EDUCATION

This consists of the road safety public awareness campaigns, advertisements, establishment of community road safety councils and making everyone understand that road safety is everybody’s responsibility. At this level the Transport Department in KZN is second to none. We are determined to ensure that we continue the campaign to ensure a sustained buy in by all sectors of the community, the youth, business, the taxi industry, the freight industry, the religious community, the business community and those who have themselves experienced the trauma of being involved in or loosing loved ones in a car crash. This campaign is going to be intensified.

  1. ENGINEERING

Since 1994, we have strived to make good roads not only an exclusive privilege of urban dwellers but we have constructed and continue to construct thousands of rural roads while making urban roads better. We have embarked on a hazardous location elimination programme, building speed humps, barriers and other traffic calming devices. This programme is on-going and is going to be intensified with community involvement.

  1. ENFORCEMENT

We have increased our Road Traffic Inspectorate (RTI) staff and trained them professionally to deal with a broad spectrum of offences. These include overloading (of which over 80% of overloading enforcement is done in this province), specialised public transport enforcement (our public transport enforcement unit is the only unit of its kind in the country) and increased general visibility. We have also created structures of co-ordination with SAPS, SANDF, Emergency Medical Rescue Services and local authority traffic agencies. We have increased overall visibility. "Zero Tolerance" has become our second name. We have introduced booze buses into South Africa and assisted other provinces such as Limpopo and Western Cape to introduce one each. We have introduced a traffic camera office, the only one in the country which churns out about 282 000 written notices every six months. We have acquired more Drager Evidential Breathalysers this year and have been in a position to place five of them with the SAPS Accident Units around the province. A number of these have also been placed with local authority traffic departments. We have also pioneered road side courts and refined the processes at these courts to ensure optimum efficiency and we believe that the influence of the road side courts has a positive effect on motorists because they feel the immediate consequences of their actions.

What is being done in KZN in terms of road safety, road infrastructure and enforcement compares favourably with what is being done in Australia, USA, UK and Europe. Our RTI compares equally well in terms of professional training to those countries. The South African motorist is not intrinsically more murderous or more reckless than their counterparts overseas. Motorists from South Africa and else where will have an inclination to take risks. However, the difference is that in the countries we have mentioned they will not be able to get away with it but in South Africa, up to now they were able to get away. Furthermore, the communities in these countries are more intolerant of reckless behaviour than in South Africa.

  1. CREDIT-CARD TYPE LICENCE

From February 2003 all South African drivers must have credit-card type licences. Any other document will be regarded as driving without a licence. Previously, South Africans carried different licences. For the first time the credit card type licence is one licence for one nation. Credit Card licences are machine readable at the road side, they clearly identify the holder and provide a link on the NATIS system to the holder’s history.

They will make enforcement more efficient and the consequences of traffic offences inescapable and route out fraudulent licences.

  1. COMETH THE GREAT LEVELLER

Just as we began to utilise our hi-tech equipment and slap offending motorists with heavy fines we have learnt with shock that most South African companies budget for traffic fines as part of their senior management operating costs. This has helped us to understand the contempt and arrogance with which some of these offending motorists buy their freedom. Even as they leave the scene they leave at great speed. The fines do not serve as a deterrent at all. It is in this context that we must understand the arrogance of someone driving at 214 kilometres per hour and the only explanation offered is that he/she was bored and getting away with a mere R3 000 fine and no endorsement or suspension of their driver’s licence. We have had enough.

What keeps the American, Australian or European driver from reckless driving is not sainthood but the ever present possibility of loosing his/her licence for six moths, one year, or five years. When the road death toll reached 20 in one Australian province it was seen as a major crisis and a Commission of Inquiry was instituted. At that time the road death toll in South Africa was at 700.

Whether the company has budgeted for your traffic fines as a Director or you are a messenger, if you drive recklessly we have only two choices, to allow you to continue killing and maiming other people or suspending or cancelling your licence. We choose the latter. It is in your hands. From March 2003, Zero Tolerance is not going to be a hollow phrase. Let us all join in making a safer driving culture in our country.

We cannot bring back the dead but we can drastically reduce the carnage.

 

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