Motor vehicle roadworthiness...

Regular roadworthy inspections.

  • For

    Votes: 60 66.7%
  • Against

    Votes: 30 33.3%

  • Total voters
    90
Great idea - but impractical in SA. Too many queues and open to corruption. Hence it will not achieve what it is supposed to.
 
Theoretically yes.

In practice in South Africa? No. Too much corruption.

+many. I would be for it if not for corruption. What I would be for though is compulsory insurance.
 
It's actually infuriating how many people drive without proper working brake lights

I see this daily in Indian and African areas. No working brake lights, indicators are nonexistent and generally driving over lines etc.
 
The only place where this will have huge impact will be on the public transport sector.

So I say yes for taxi's, buses etc every year without corruption - which means it's futile in SA
 
Anyone who drives with their rear foglights on unnecessarily (which would most likely be due to ignorance and incompetence) should be pulled over and questioned, with the option to forced to redo their drivers license.
Also anyone driving with their brights on
 
Getting a roadworthy is a pain and it costs a fair amount of money. I also suspect those with the dangerous vehicles will care the least and get around it somehow so those who need the tests the least will be most likely to do it and waste their money. This is really unnecessary if traffic officers did their jobs. The material things on a roadworthy that impact on accidents are tyre tread, headlights working, etc. All things that traffic cops should spot and deal with in the normal course of their duties if they where actually doing that. Fix the cops and how useless they are, don't ever add more red tape just for the sake of it.
 
I don't know how much safer it would make the roads. If better quality cars was genuinely a means to improve safety then a better first option would be allowing the importing of good quality used vehicles. That will drive down the price of used vehicles. Maybe even push the low end new cars out of the market. But the point is that most people drive ancient vehicles because it is all they can afford. Forcing yearly tests isn't going to remove vehicles in bad condition, only encourage finding ways around the test. Public transport isn't a viable alternative either unless it is ubiquitous, reliable and cheap.

However they already cannot provide an efficient service to renew driver's or vehicle licenses. It can take most of a day for each. I can imagine queues for roadworthy tests would be even worse.

Here in Moz, you book your car in, bring it to the testing station at 8am and you are out of there by noon (if you have cash moola to spare you can be out of there by 8:15am but that is naughty).
It takes 4 hours to get a vehicle tested? That's ridiculous.

Why not just ban cars all together? All car accidents happens in cars, but not all are caused by drunk driving.
As I recall it isn't even the majority that are caused by being intoxicated. But there are already more than adequate laws in place to deal with it.
 
Every five years I would be quite happy with.

But then scrap this stupid concept of needing to go into a brick and mortar building to get a stupid print out of the license that means nothing more than being a glorified invoice.

Put a QR code on every car that stays there forever and gets linked to the owner and the license validity.

Pay the **** online annually with no need to replace it every time.
 
I'd be for it if it were free. Otherwise very much against, we pay enough already.
 
The laws to remove unroadworthy vehicles already exist. We don't need more of them.
 
It will make 0.0X range difference in this country and many others. If you look at accidents and dashcam views of how it happens, the following I noticed: As long as road safety is handled theoretically, it will stay a miserable failure, driving is a very practical experience, even if it feels you sit in a living room with bluetooth.
--??-Every time I was pulled over in a roadworthy car I saw some obvious unroadworthy and sometime smoky one ignored, now these are easy to spot and they should be tested, and this alone will put pressure on their ability to actually do it. When everything is in chaos and out of control, prioritise and work your way down, otherwise you going to run around in circles till iternity and see virtually zero improvement.

---Human behaviour all the way, from the education, instructor, right through to the driver.

-Drugs, Alcolhol......Speed.
-Distractions=CellPhones, Passengers, Radio, SATNAV, Aircon settings. I witnessed a cellphone accident one day on a double lane. Both lanes came up to robot turn red, I just saw a guy in a pickup passing me eyes/head on his phone, boom at 60Km/h in the back of the car in front of him, it rained glass all over my vehicle, luckily no damage.
-The poor understanding regarding the feel of modern car steering systems. If you take your eyes off the road you will not feel the car drift off course thanks to power steering unlike in old vehicles. Now once you look back, anything can happen, just depends how your reflexces handles the few second situation.
-Not giving other drivers way, even if you have not to.
-Insurance fraud by drivers.
-Keep safe distance, more so in rain and snow.
-Makeup and eating breakfast while driving.
-Unless under certain circuimstances most accidents happens because the drivers involved were all asleep to some degree, so the accident happens within their reaction time or space.
-Not being aware of other vehicles around you or at intercetions.

Note:Just imagine:
1-It snow all over the country.
2-We all drive in car-planes one day.
 
Last edited:
It will make 0.0X range difference in this country and many others. If you look at accidents and dashcam views of how it happens, the following I noticed: As long as road safety is handled theoretically, it will stay a miserable failure, driving is a very practical experience, even if it feels you sit in a living room with bluetooth.
--??-Every time I was pulled over in a roadworthy car I saw some obvious unroadworthy and sometime smoky one ignored, now these are easy to spot and they should be tested, and this alone will put pressure on their ability to actually do it. When everything is in chaos and out of control, prioritise and work your way down, otherwise you going to run around in circles till iternity and see virtually zero improvement.

---Human behaviour all the way, from the education, instructor, right through to the driver.

-Drugs, Alcolhol......Speed.
-Distractions=CellPhones, Passengers, Radio, SATNAV, Aircon settings. I witnessed a cellphone accident one day on a double lane. Both lanes came up to robot turn red, I just saw a guy in a pickup passing me eyes/head on his phone, boom at 60Km/h in the back of the car in front of him, it rained glass all over my vehicle, luckily no damage.
-The poor understanding regarding the feel of modern car steering systems. If you take your eyes off the road you will not feel the car drift off course thanks to power steering unlike in old vehicles. Now once you look back, anything can happen, just depends how your reflexces handles the few second situation.
-Not giving other drivers way, even if you have not to.
-Insurance fraud by drivers.
-Keep safe distance, more so in rain and snow.
-Makeup and eating breakfast while driving.
-Unless under certain circuimstances most accidents happens because the drivers involved were all asleep to some degree, so the accident happens within their reaction time or space.
-Not being aware of other vehicles around you or at intercetions.

Note:Just imagine:
1-It snow all over the country.
2-We all drive in car-planes one day.

Yeah, I have not really seen dashcam videos of any mechanical or roadworthy fail crashes, I have seen tons that are down to driving behaviour.
 
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