The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) says it is unable to comment on the Automobile Association’s (AA) proposed changes for car licence disc renewals because it has not seen formal proposal.
This follows a statement made by AA CEO Bobby Ramagwede in January 2025, where he called on South Africa to implement mandatory roadworthy tests as a prerequisite for car licence renewals.
The proposal
Responding to questions from MyBroadband, the RTMC stated that it has not seen the details of the AA’s proposal.
“It will be appropriate for us to study and understand the details of the proposal and its full policy and operational implications before we can take a position,” it said.
The suggestion to include roadworthy tests as part of the licence disc renewal process was made shortly after Transport Minister Barbara Creecy revealed the road fatality statistics for the 2024/2025 holiday period.
The latest figures shows that just over 1,500 people were killed on the roads over the festive season, representing a 5.3% year-on-year increase from the already concerning totals recorded the year prior.
The main contributors to this statistic, according to the minister, included speeding, reckless driving, and driving under the influence, all of which need to be addressed as part of an effort to improve driver behaviour.
Ramagwede took this a step further, arguing that improving driver behaviour alone will not be enough to address the country’s abysmal road safety record.
He highlighted that 16,527 vehicles had been found to be unroadworthy at police roadblocks over the monitored period, presenting another major area of concern for road safety.
He, therefore, made the argument that roadworthiness tests should become a compulsory step of the car licence disc renewal process, effectively making roadworthiness tests an annual requirement for all vehicles in South Africa.
“Every year, motorists have to update their vehicle licence discs. Part and parcel of that update should be a roadworthiness test, otherwise your vehicle is not legal for road use,” said Ramagwede.
A headache for motorists
Managing director at Driving.co.za, Rob Handfield-Jones, said the AA’s proposal is fundamentally flawed.
He cited data on South Africa’s accident statistics and unroadworthy vehicles captured from 2015 to 2023, arguing that there is no correlation between fatal crashes and roadworthiness.
“The relationship between the percentage contribution of ‘vehicle factors’ to fatal crashes and the percentage of the vehicle parc which is unroadworthy has been broadly inverse over time,” he said.
In other words, roadworthiness has become less and less of a contributor to accidents even as the number of unroadworthy vehicles in the country has increased.
“The AA’s call for radical roadworthiness interventions therefore has no support in the data,” said Handfield-Jones.
“As to the AA’s claim that its proposal would be ‘highly effective’, mandatory regular roadworthiness inspections are already in force for several vehicle classes.”
Buses require a test every six months, and heavy vehicles and minibus taxis must be evaluated annually.
Despite this, there is no evidence that this policy has led to a greater percentage of roadworthy vehicles in this parc, he argued.
Another potential issue with the proposal is that it could become yet another avenue for widespread corruption.
Unscrupulous vehicle testing centres have been caught issuing licences for cars that did not meet South African road law requirements, leading to fraud charges that have landed perpetrators in prison or slapped with substantial fines of up to R20,000 per person.
Requiring all cars in South Africa to undergo this evaluation means that a relatively quick online process will become a significantly longer task where citizens need to book and physically take their cars to a testing centre.
It also has the potential to create a much larger corruption problem where more and more testing centres are prepared to sell fraudulent licences for easy money, while honest motorists are stuck with a new administrative hassle.
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