
South Africa’s driver’s licences are meant to hold the nation’s road users to a higher standard of safety, but have been woefully inadequate at achieving this purpose while making for an easy revenue stream for the government.
This is according to road safety expert and Driving.co.za managing director Rob Handfield-Jones, who has expressed his concerns over the state of the country’s roads and driver’s licence enforcement on several occasions.
The cost of low standards
It is estimated that at least 70 people are killed on the roads in South Africa every day – the equivalent of a medium-sized airline crashing with no survivors.
“If the latter were happening, air safety would be a national emergency which would seize government with extreme urgency ahead of almost all other issues,” said Handfield-Jones.
“I believe road safety deserves the same response.”
He attributed the high fatality rate to multiple failings within the sector, namely poor training, sub-standard enforcement, a lack of driver skill, and outdated test requirements.
Multiple probes conducted by the Special Investigating Unit have revealed that more than half of the licences under investigation were fraudulently obtained.
However, even when a person does pass their test, they are meeting a curriculum that dates back to 1983 and does not adequately prepare users for a contemporary driving environment.
A process was initiated in 2008 to address this issue but has still not resulted in any meaningful change, seeing South Africa fall far behind the world’s leading road safety countries.
Compounding matters is the fact that only 17% of citizens have a driver’s licence, which in practice means that the vast majority of the public has little to no experience behind the wheel, which also tends to manifest into a general lack of road safety awareness as both a driver and a pedestrian.
Another area of concern is the functioning of both the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) and Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC).
Handfield-Jones previously told MyBroadband that government has been prioritising revenue ahead of road safety for thirty years, as evidenced by its insistence that licence cards must expire and be renewed every five years.
In August 2024, it was revealed that the RTMC had conducted a study that extending the validity period of licences would be more in line with international best practices from other countries with much better safety standards.
Despite these findings, the validity period has not been extended, with the official explanation being that citizens need regular health check-ups to prove they are fit to handle a vehicle.
This explanation did little to satisfy industry stakeholders and civil action groups like the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse, which have accused the RTMC of using the shorter renewal periods as an easy revenue stream.
Handfield-Jones has also written to Transport Minister Barbara Creecy concerning the government’s response to drunk driving incidents.
“Research on the calamitous levels and effects of drinking and driving pressed the ANC government to reduce the maximum allowance blood alcohol concentration from 0.08% to 0.05% almost three decades ago,” he said.
This did nothing to reduce cases and, in fact, the number of alcohol-related car deaths went up from 54% to 58% between 1999 and 2008, with the average intoxication level exceeding the legal limit by a factor of three.
This raises the question of where law enforcement’s priorities are, as only 0.7% of the estimated 50,000 traffic notices issued in South Africa every month are for alcohol infringements.
While all of this is going on, the Portfolio Committee on Transport has become less receptive to external input, taking in almost none of the proposals put forth by the public and organizations regarding the Aarto Amendment Act.
“Indeed, the only voices the Committee appears to be hearing are those from within the Department of Transport, RTIA, and RTMC,” said Handfield-Jones.
It adds fuel to the growing sentiment that today’s legislation and enforcement is informed by profit and vested interests rather than public safety, not helped by the fact that the CEO of the RTMC earns more than R10 million per annum.
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