Law fraternity throwing its wait behind creating a safe environment on our roads

Magistrate courts must punish road offenders

It is in the interest of safety on our roads that magistrate courts should be discouraged from withdrawing charges against drunken drivers, Advocate Shamilla Batohi told a breakfast stakeholders’ briefing organized by the Public Safety & Communications Chief Directorate of the KZN Department of Transport.

Adv. Batohi pointed out that some magistrates were questioning the reliability of the equipment used to measure alcohol content in a driver’s boy called the dragger, after such drivers had been charged by traffic police, and that such practice was counter-productive as it undermined the ongoing struggle to stop drivers from driving under the influence of alcohol.

Batohi said that the effectiveness of law enforcement against pedestrian offenders, like people who walk on the main road, was debatable, and she was adamant that educational and engineering interventions seemed most likely to bear desirable results in dealing with pedestrians.

But she endorsed the Department’s Road Traffic Inspectorate’s relentless efforts at policing provincial roads, and called for the fast implementation of the point-demerit system which will see habitual offenders losing their licences.

"In London an offending driver can expect to have his or her licence suspended for 12 to 20 months, depending on the amount of alcohol he or she imbibed, as part of the sentence for drunken driving," she said.

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