Government can fix SA's road carnage... if it wanted to - Rob Handfield-Jones

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Total driver's licence failure in South Africa

South Africa has killed more road users in the last twenty years than have died on the UK's roads since the dawn of motoring.

Road safety expert and Driving.co.za managing director Rob Handfield-Jones highlighted this shocking statistic in letters he wrote to transport minister Barbara Creecy in July and September 2024.
 
come to Israel my friends, thats where we separate the men from the boys,
ironically some of the most draconian road laws out there, AND they still manage to drive like possessed people.
 
bwana said:
To be fair... South Africans are appalling drivers.
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I have to agree.
Maybe its my limited time spent driving here but I rarely see accidents on the UK roads.
UK drivers also seem to stick to the rules a lot better. But then I have to admit that we get to drive down country lanes, barely wider than a car, at 60mph like we are amateur rally drivers.
 
deweyzeph said:
I think that's a little exaggerated, to be fair. I've rented cars in places like Mexico and Morocco and things are way more hectic there.
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Just because someone might be worse it doesn't mean SA drivers aren't still appalling.
 
killerbyte said:
I have to agree.
Maybe its my limited time spent driving here but I rarely see accidents on the UK roads.
UK drivers also seem to stick to the rules a lot better. But then I have to admit that we get to drive down country lanes, barely wider than a car, at 60mph like we are amateur rally drivers.
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Yeah, you still get the nutcases, but there are definitely fewer of them.

I'm sure the annual MOT requirement and the points system for infringements helps.
 
Its very easy

Put that AARTO penalty system in place. 12 points.

1. If you drive without a license (ie suspended or not one at all). You go to jail, or pay a hefty fine. R20k should do.
2. All cars to have 3rd party insurance at least, this must be proven at license disc renewal or you cant renew it.
3. If you do cause an accident with no insurance or no license, then the state can claim the other person's damages from you, and pay it over to the other party via the court.
4. RAF eventually phased out. The no fault system actually protects people from driving however they want because RAF makes you big bucks.
5. Cars are to get a visual inspection at license disc renewal. If you dont pass the visual inspection then you have to fix it first. You will have a 1 month grace period. Dont do it, then it gets towed.
6. Taxi drivers must be held accountable or if they dont, their route license gets revoked or not renewed. You shouldnt be giving them more business if they owe too much fines etc. You drive badly, you dont have a license anymore.
7. Any taxi driver that destroys the railway infrastructure gets a lifetime ban.

There is honestly no negotiation. I'd be very tempted to push the Singapore rule where you need to buy a permit 100k-500k to be able to buy or own a car. Theyre very strict. The permit allows you to own the car for 10 years and deals with its recycling afterwards.

This is Singapore. I like how they simply put it. Disqualification for life.

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Swa said:
A major cause of accidents is poor road infrastructure. Stop signs are missing, robots aren't working, trees are obstructing views, not enough bridges where necessary.
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Nope. There is a traffic circle I know of. The speed limit is 60kmph. But yet most cars end up driving through a person's wall. You should hear the street racing at night.

Then at Mouille point the speed limit is 50km but yet cars end up on their roof.
 
Corelli said:
Its very easy

Put that AARTO penalty system in place. 12 points.

1. If you drive without a license (ie suspended or not one at all). You go to jail, or pay a hefty fine. R20k should do.
2. All cars to have 3rd party insurance at least, this must be proven at license disc renewal or you cant renew it.
3. If you do cause an accident with no insurance or no license, then the state can claim the other person's damages from you, and pay it over to the other party via the court.
4. RAF eventually phased out. The no fault system actually protects people from driving however they want because RAF makes you big bucks.
5. Cars are to get a visual inspection at license disc renewal. If you dont pass the visual inspection then you have to fix it first. You will have a 1 month grace period. Dont do it, then it gets towed.
6. Taxi drivers must be held accountable or if they dont, their route license gets revoked or not renewed. You shouldnt be giving them more business if they owe too much fines etc. You drive badly, you dont have a license anymore.
7. Any taxi driver that destroys the railway infrastructure gets a lifetime ban.

There is honestly no negotiation. I'd be very tempted to push the Singapore rule where you need to buy a permit 100k-500k to be able to buy or own a car. Theyre very strict. The permit allows you to own the car for 10 years and deals with its recycling afterwards.

This is Singapore. I like how they simply put it. Disqualification for life.

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You see, there is the problem. There is law and there is application. In every country I know of where there's the option of a fine it always ends up as a fine and not imprisonment.

Corelli said:
Nope. There is a traffic circle I know of. The speed limit is 60kmph. But yet most cars end up driving through a person's wall. You should hear the street racing at night.

Then at Mouille point the speed limit is 50km but yet cars end up on their roof.
Click to expand...
And there is the thing. If it were road users it would be everywhere yet it's only in certain places. Poor planning. I was driving on the highway once. At one point it stops and then forks left or right. Only 10m from the end I could see and had to stop dead. If I happened to blink at that point or had to look left or right for some reason I would have been over the railing and onto the bottom road. These things should be designed better with better visibility.
 
Pedestrians are also a major contributor to carnage on the roads. Each and every day you encounter pedestrians on a suicide mission trying to get to the other side of the road, many times due to being lazy to walk to the designated pedestrian crossing.

Some time ago I was in Frankfurt in Germany with four other colleagues to attend an exhibition at Messe Frankfurt. The only time I heard a car's hooter was when this one person from our group tried to jaywalk instead of using the pedestrian crossing like the rest of us.
 
Enforcement has died. We have more metro and traffic cops than ever but they do just about nothing. I remember as a kid traffic cops where out and about and actually issuing fines and citations. People were genuinely scared of them and that kept a lot of people more behaved on the road. Unfortunately, in any society there are just a large number of Aholes who only obey laws for fear of getting caught and let's face it, there is almost zero enforcement of traffic rules in SA, and the fines system has broken down to the point where most people just ignore them with zero consequence. It's a failure of leadership in policing and a sign of the collapse of the enforcement of laws. Would change incredibly quickly if they put the right leaders in charge again I recon. For the younger generation they never saw the system working so they have nothing to compare it to but if you were alive and awake in the 80's to early 90's you know what working policing looks like. Almost no one ran stop streets in those days.
 
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